Memory usage continuously increases over time in Illustrator 2026 and is not released properly (macOS M4 Max)
Environment
- Adobe Illustrator 2026 (Desktop)
- Adobe Illustrator 2025 (for comparison)
- Apple M4 Max
- 64GB Unified Memory
- macOS (latest)
- GPU Performance: OFF
- Real-time Drawing & Editing: OFF
Workflow
I use Illustrator as a visual reference board containing an extremely large archive of linked images (not embedded). I arrange thousands of reference images on large canvases to compare composition, color, style, motion, and visual ideas. This workflow is essential for my art direction and animation production because spatial comparison is much more efficient than browsing images individually.
Illustrator 2026 performs significantly faster than Illustrator 2025 with this workflow, which is a great improvement.
Issue
I compared the same Illustrator file in both Illustrator 2025 and Illustrator 2026.
Immediately after opening the same file:
- Illustrator 2025 uses approximately 5.5 GB of memory.
- Illustrator 2026 uses approximately 24.2 GB of memory.
This higher initial memory usage seems acceptable because Illustrator 2026 performs much faster.
However, after approximately 30 minutes of normal work on the same file, Illustrator 2026's memory usage continuously increases to approximately 77.5 GB, while swap memory reaches approximately 29 GB.
No additional Illustrator documents were opened during this period. I simply continued working with the same file.
In previous tests, I also observed that even after closing all documents and leaving only a new blank document open, Illustrator continued to retain a very large amount of memory. Memory was only released after quitting and restarting Illustrator.
Illustrator 2025 is slower with the same workflow, but it does not show this continuous memory growth.
This behavior appears to be a memory leak or cached memory that is not being released correctly.
I attached two screenshots:
1. Immediately after opening the same Illustrator file.
2. Approximately 30 minutes later while working with the same file.
Please investigate this behavior, especially for workflows involving very large linked-image reference libraries used for visual comparison in art direction, animation, concept art, and design.
Thank you.
W
shared this idea
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Can be a similar problem:
High GPU load on macOS 26 Tahoe
https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/601447/suggestions/50552691
