The simple fact is, Adobe doesn't give a flying f*ck about fixing anything in Illustrator. Illustrator is full of these kinds of glitches. It's totally unintuitive, can crash for no readily apparent reason and, putting it simply, feels like it was made in 1996. The sense of achievement one gets from producing anything in Illustrator is second only to the sense of achievement in getting it to do anything at all.

So why doesn't Adobe do anything? They have a captive market of Adobe CC Subscribers. Oh yes, and there is the other small matter of them having a MONOPOLY on Vector Drawing Software.

Oh -- and it hogs your hard drive. Files produced in Illustrator are HUGE –– much bigger than the files created in Macromedia Freehand.

Give Me Freehand of Give Me Death!!!

ps By way of an interesting footnote, as I see it Illustrator is the only core package that Adobe designed from scratch. Flagship product Photoshop was initially developed by Knoll Software, InDesign is a rework of Aldus PageMaker (which Adobe mangled badly, introducing chronic instability in Version 6 from which it never really recovered), Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Freehand were acquired from Macromedia (Fireworks and Freehand were subsequently killed in their sleep by Adobe as they were alternatives to Adobe products).

Having this issue in cc 2020 as well. Any fixes yet?

I have a file with 3 elements. 1 element is a basic rectangle and 2 are custom elements. In Ai 24.0 these custom elements appear as 'Path', and I am unable to use the Gradient Annotator when both are selected at once (no groups here). In Ai 23.1 I have the same elements, however the 2 custom paths appear as 'Clip Group' (each on their own layer still, both in their own 'Clip Group'). I am able to release these clipping groups, delete the clipping paths and keep the 2 custom shapes which have now become 'Path'. I am then able to use the Gradient Annotator when both are selected at once. I can't screen record but have attached images. Gradient Annotator is 'shown' on both Ais.

Nobody fix this? Is time to look for alternatives to this disastrous software.

Please fix this, Adobe! The Gradient Annotator disappears and I can't get it to reappear. Re-starting Illustrator (23.06) and my iMac doesn't help. Sometimes it shows up and other times nothing I do will get it to show up.

...several minutes later, after banging my head against my desk, I figured out that if the object is in a group, the Gradient Annotator will NOT show up, unless you either flatten and get rid of the group or go to a different layer in the group. I'm good, now.

This problem can occur when you have a solo object that is grouped by itself for some reason.

I went into the various group isolations to see when it would access the annotator, it turned out the object I was editing the gradient of was grouped by itself after ungrouping the annotator appeared outside the isolation

hope this helps I've struggled with this problem before and only now have i figured that out.

Same problem happens in version 23.0.4. Gradient annotator is not visible when adjusting a gradient across multiple objects in a group.

This bug also happens in lastest version 23.0.3

In response to Adobe:

Thanks for looking at this. I do believe it would best to have the annotator tool visible no matter if the object is a group, compound or other, especially if you need to adjust the gradient across of a bunch of objects in one group.

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Hi,

Thanks for sharing information with us , Illustrator team really appreciate this.

On looking your file I observed the group does not show gradient annotator but you can go inside the group via double click get into isolation mode .
In Isolation Mode we are able to see gradient annotator on Compound Path.

Can you kindly check does this workaround resolves your problem.

With Best Regards
Ankit Goyal
Illustrator team
Adobe Systems| ankgoyal@adobe.com |

Hi,

Apologies for the inconvenience caused to you due to this issue and getting back to you this late.
We are unable to reproduce this issue in house.
Can you help the Illustrator team to isolate this issue further so that we can nail this down?
If yes, then please let me know the following:
1) Is this Issue still happening on your machine in the Latest version 23.0.3 ?
2) If yes,Kindly provide Test file(Via File->Package) & some steps with which you are facing issue and share with us at ShareWithAI@adobe.com in a Zip file.
Please mention the title of this issue as the subject of the mail.

Thanks and Regards
Ankit Goyal
Illustrator Team

Same Problem here. I have a compound shape that I don't see the tool with, but when i create a rectangle, I can see the tool.

same here, i noticed on grouped objects, it disappeared, anybody help plz