@Egor unfortunately I don't have anyone with Windows to test it.

Outer Glow works as expected on Mac with 30.1, but Inner Glow shows the bug.

It sure is. Do you have anyone with Windows to test it, just to narrow it down to Macs only?

@Egor Chistyakov it doesn't help either. I've also tested on my co-worker's Mac and got the same problem, so it's definitely a bug.

I see, thanks. I test it with Windows 10.
If you toggle preview in the CPU mode — does it differ?

@Egor Chistyakov yes it looks differently on my side, see attached screenshot.
I'm using Mac Studio M1 Max 32GB, macOS 26.2 (25C56). GPU details attached.

Edit: I've tried again and realised that it only works if the opacity is set to 100%. Any percentage lower fails to show the effect and instead fills the object entirely with the glow color.

@NH, when I try this in Illustrator 30.1, it works as expected. Can you take a look at the document attached and see if looks differently at your side?
Can you share the specs your system has, the build version, the GPU details?

macOS Tahoe 26.2 > Illustrator v30.1

When applying the Inner Glow effect INTO the Fill object in the Appearance panel, the effect doesn't show correctly. There is no such issue when tried on the older version of Illustrator.

Steps to reproduce:
- Apply Inner Glow on an object's Fill in the Appearance panel

Richard, please share some screenshots at least (preferably a video), a test file (try to zip it before attaching, UserVoice has some temporary problems with attaching .ai-documents), your full OS and GPU specifications, the settings defined in your Effect > Document Raster Effects Settings dialog (the resolution should make sense for your media and the Add Around Object should be large enough to fit your blur value chosen).
If the site fails to allow you attach these, please send it all directly to the team via sharewithai@adobe.com, and mention the link to the report, so they can track it back here — http://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447/suggestions/50668040

Need a fix soon- I have spent over a day on trying to create something that normally only takes 20 minutes since the bug is locking up my system repeatedly

Upgraded to v30 (64 bit) Drop shadows do not generate or display properly- they are either missing or show sharp edges even with a high fade. Both Drop Shadows and Outer Glow effects take a very long time to render and often lock up the program or Windows (Win11) completely so a reboot is needed. This is happening on relatively simple objects of a small size, I use these effects a lot and never had a problem with it like this before, even with large complex objects. There is something in the newest version of Illustrator which is causing the problem, I hope is is patched soon as it is killing my workflow

Note2: If I set the effects to 72dpi in Document Raster settings, then I get a drastically reduced file - but then that shows that illustrator is not saving this information as vector (what could be simpler than remembering the colour, the offset and size of blur) but somehow rendering these dropshadows as images.
I've included my save settings that I've used since the beginning. I've been using illustrator since 1989 so I'm pretty au fai with the software and its bugs. But the fact that this happens in the last four iterations of illustrator along with the broken shadows is pretty annoying. I do wish bugs were given as much attention as whatever new generative AI bloat we get added to justify the subscription. But here we are.
Thanks for the response.

Hi Egor, the artboard is 700x500mm - though the same thing happens with an artboard much smaller.
I'm not using 'Create PDF Compatible file' at all - I never use that. So the drop-shadow information is effectively a vector in that file. It's obviously a bug as even if I dropped in the dropshadows as image files - I wouldn't get a 450MB uncompressed illustrator file.. Or wait over 30 seconds for it to save.
And my 300dpi exported PDF is less than 15MB, so rasters never need to get as big as 450MB.
Basically I have a relatively simple file with 4 dropshadows in it and each instance is adding around 400MB to the file, making it over 2GB, even if I rasterized the entire file at 300dpi and saved it as an uncompressed TIFF is wouldn't as large as my illustrator file with ONE dropshadow (uncompressed).
Now… compressing it helps, but it's still takes too long to save and is obviously compressing that 3GB down.

Still broken in 29.2.1

Not fixed in 29.0.1

Still not working in 2025 version 29.0. Coming up on 5 years since the original post.

Still not working in 28.5. That seems like a long time. Since 24.0.1 and probably before.

I'm having a similar problem using two outer glow effects on a big circle, see attachment. Version 28.5 on macOS.

I have the same issue.
28.3.

Still doing it in 28.3