EXTREMELY SLOW Adobe Acrobat performance on Mac (re-reporting of common issue)
I'd like to re-report a general issue with Adobe Acrobat running on Mac. While viewing simple PDFs (<1MB), without annotations, Adobe Acrobat has 1 to two second delays when scrolling, painfully slow performance, the program is basically unusable.
I'm sure you are aware of this, because with a limited search I've seen multiple posts asking for help with this, most notably:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat/acrobat-scrolling-is-incredibly-laggy-and-slow/m-p/10652846
The issues brought up in this post fully summarize my problem -- and BEAUTIFULLY surmises a likely cause of these problems. However, while a recurrent issue, I've seen very little interest from your company in addressing it...
I have Creative Cloud, with auto-updates active for Adobe Acrobat, and I have a 2020 Macbook Pro, 16gb RAM, good graphic card (although as beautifully pointed out in the blog post above, said graphics card is not even utilized by Adobe Acrobat)... I should not be having issues with this program. I am wholesomely disappointed in this program. I'll be uninstalling it until these issues are addressed.

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Adrian Andelin commented
Will this ever be fixed? I have a 2021 MBP Pro, with M1Max and 32 GB RAM. There's absolutely NO reason I should be having difficulties with pdf. For years I've been having this problem. Please fix your software Adobe! I've gotten used to using it, but it seems like there are much better options out there and I'm considering canceling Creative Cloud membership because of this stupid issue.
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soroush aalibagi commented
really painful :(
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Rita Wizman commented
I thought I was the only one! My pdf's take forever to open even on the browser!!!
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Marcy Altimano commented
I'd like to second that, or third that, or whatever number we're up to - this is so frustrating, and I get to pay for that frustration every month!
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Vijay Bobbili commented
Same issue here. Extremely slow when using Acrobat reader. It works fine if you open it in a browser like Chrome or Edge
Mac M1
Architecture: x86_64
Processor: Apple M1
Build: 21.11.20039.0
AGM: 4.30.115
CoolType: 6.0.3
JP2K: 2.0.4.50016 -
Trevor Hedge commented
This is an ongoing nightmare.... Using Acrobat is like going back to using a 386....
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G. Michael Vasey commented
Yes this is sooo annoying and you need to fix it.
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Omied Bagheri commented
Yes, I have this same issue as well. Thought theres something wrong with my computer. MBP with i-9 and lots of ram.
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Mike Daly commented
Happens every time I open a new PDF until the system has time to cache the document. This is new since recent OS updates and DC updates.
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MM commented
Same problem on the new Macbook Pro with the M1 Pro processor. Lots of free RAM, no lag on any other programs, PDFs work fine on Mac's preview app. It's definitely an Acrobat Professional issue, can't handle small pdfs fluently, but it's much much worse on annotated or big ones, unreadable.
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SRF Wouden commented
Acrobat makes it a living **** to remove Acrobat from your Mac. No uninstall to be found anywhere!
I managed to uninstall Acrobat Reader using the free trial of CleanMyMac https://cleanmymac.com/
Then reinstalled the whole thing. All back to optimal speed again.
Hope this also helps for you! -
Keith Gillard commented
TERRIBLE PERFORMANCE. Almost made me return my brand new top-of-the-line Macbook Pro as horribly underperforming.
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Umpa commented
same here, using 2020 macbook pro
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Yue Li commented
Same here. Extremely slow on an iMac Pro with top specs after some recent "updates" from Adobe. Version 2021.007.20099
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Jacqui Rae commented
I have Acrobat Pro installed on a recent model Mac. I am a website developer, so my system specs are consistent with the need to run resource hungry programs concurrently.
Even with every other program closed and on small un-annotated PDFs, Acrobat regularly lags, jolts, crashes, will not scroll and will not search (or conducts searches like an elderly pensioner looking for their glasses).
I pay a fortune for Creative Cloud on a professional level subscription and as the OP has said, this is a long running, known issue.
FIX IT.
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Guy Putman commented
Same really disturbing problem!!!
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Gary Stewart commented
This is a known bug. Not only for Mac, also on my very strong Win 10, 64-bit system, scrolling is lagging. This is Adobe's fault, not your system's, obviously.