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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.

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  • W commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi, thank you for reaching out.

    I have some additional information that may be helpful.

    For my current project:

    * Number of linked images: approximately 3,000
    * Total size of linked image files: approximately 430 MB
    * Illustrator (.ai) file size: approximately 384 MB

    The file contains only placed linked images. It does not contain any vector paths, text, clipping masks, effects, symbols, patterns, or any other Illustrator objects.

    When I first open the file, Illustrator uses around 3 GB of memory. After that, the memory usage gradually continues to increase over time, even if I leave Illustrator idle without doing anything.

    Compared to my previous project, this file actually contains less data. I also tested opening only this single file with no other Illustrator documents open, and the same behavior still occurs.

    In contrast, I have not observed this issue with files that contain only vector artwork and no linked images. If there is any memory increase in those files, it is so small that I have not noticed it during normal use.

    The issue is also not specific to this file. If I create a new document containing a similar number of linked images, I get the same result.

    Regarding the debug session, thank you for the offer. Unfortunately, I'm very busy with work at the moment, so I don't think I'll be able to make time for a live debugging session. However, I'd be happy to help through chat by providing additional information, collecting logs, testing builds, or trying any troubleshooting steps you would like me to perform.

    Thank you for looking into this.

  • Kausik Naguri commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi, I from from Illustrator team. Would like to know more about your issue. Can you please share what kind of objects your file contains, what operations you are doing and whether the issue is specific to this file?
    Also, please let us know if you can join a debug session with us, we'll setup one.

  • W commented  ·   ·  Report

    Thanks for your suggestions!

    I don't use any third-party Illustrator plugins.

    I do use several scripts, but they worked without any issues in Illustrator 2025 under the same environment.

    I also checked the GPU issue you linked, but the problem still occurs even with GPU Performance disabled.

    Memory usage keeps increasing over time, and closing the document doesn't release the memory. The only way to recover it is to restart Illustrator.

    So it seems to be a different issue.

  • Joost Egelie commented  ·   ·  Report

    Just checked mine on iMac M3. Illustrator 2026 (V 30.6) uses only 6.61 GB here - and it's been open since yesterday; I've been working extensively with it, also with large files. Do you use certain plugins?

Illustrator (Desktop) Bugs: Performance

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