Skip to content
← Acrobat for Windows and Mac

Feature request / Bug report

Acrobat for Windows and Mac: User Interface

Categories

JUMP TO ANOTHER FORUM

(thinking…)

Ditch the 2023 User Interface in Acrobat

There are so many shortcomings and problems with the new 2023 GUI interface. Here are just a few:

  1. Swapping left and right-hand panels for no reason. This does not improve anything for users. It just forces users to change everything about how they work in Acrobat every workday.

  2. Functions are indicated by random icons. In the 90s, we learned that icons in software and websites don't work across different populations. Users have a difficult time figuring out what the heck they mean. Give text labels.

  3. The left panel is permanently positioned on the screen and obscures part of the document below. Seriously Adobe, WTF.

  4. The entire menu/panel system can't be customized, moved, or docked. Another WTF.

  5. Hamburger menus (those obscure 3 horizontal lines) are used on mobile interfaces to collapse menus. They are totally unnecessary and inappropriate on desktop interfaces — where working people spend most of their time working. Give people real menus with real names. "Menu" is not accurate, either. What is the name of the other menu to the right? Menu 2? Cheeseburger Menu?

  6. The new interface is inaccessible for those with disabilities who use assistive technologies, especially screen reader users. Adobe has seriously violated its VPAT with governments and corporations worldwide who are required by law to provide accessible work environments and tools.

  7. Grey on Grey is not an accessible color scheme. Can't tell if some icons are active or disabled. Those with low vision can't discern the icons.

  8. Digital signatures, Document Cloud (where Adobe stores your files by default), subscriptions, OCR, file creation, file combining, and accessibility all have reported major problems for the past few years...but rather than fix these critical problems, money was instead spent on rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.

As long-time PDF consultants, my firm has found that the majority of customers are professionals who use Acrobat for their jobs. These are not "casual" users working on their smartphones. They are using desktops/laptops with full screens, not mobile devices to do their jobs. And they work with PDFs a lot.

They have developed actions and scripts to automate processes on dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of PDF files every day. These industries include print, prepress, graphic design, accessibility & remediation, accessible forms, variable forms, variable printing, data validation, financial institutions (think of all those bank statements every month!), health care, investment and finance, and manufacturing.

Dramatic GUI changes like 2023's completely change how these automated processes work...if they still work at all.

The cost to these industries to correct the now-broken processes — brought on by Adobe's whimsical, untested design idea — is appalling. If I was a major corporation hit by this unnecessary expense, I'd ban Adobe products from my company and look for another PDF vendor.

There are now many reputable competitors to Adobe Acrobat: See:
— https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-pdf-editors
— https://www.techradar.com/best/pdf-editors
— https://www.pcworld.com/article/407214/best-pdf-editors.html

Calling this Acrobat's "Modern Viewer" is a form of gaslighting Adobe customers. It's not modern at all — 30 years ago, using icons failed in software and web interfaces, and it's failing again with Acrobat 2023. Sometimes retro isn't good, especially retro user interfaces. Please don't attempt to bring back disco, old-fashioned 20 inch TVs, polyester suits, rotary phones and VHS tapes as being "Modern," too.

Ditch this "Modern Viewer" and instead give us a working tool to get our jobs done.

  1. Revert the interface back to what it was.

  2. Fix Acrobat's bugs. There are so many!

  3. And improve the accessibility for those with disabilities (who can't get to the Comments panel, Bookmarks panel, understand what and how much is redacted, make edits or change the content, scale/enlarge the interface, nor sign a PDF).

For those still reading this, users can revert to the old interface for now (August 2023).
— Windows: Hamburger Menu / Disable New Acrobat
— Mac: View Menu / Disable New Acrobat

I have no idea who long Adobe is going to let us revert to the "real" interface.

857 votes
Bevi Chagnon | PubCom.com shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →

We're glad you're here

Please sign in to leave feedback
Signed in as (Sign out)
Close
Submitting...
An error occurred while saving the comment
  • Raffaele Merminod commented  ·   ·  Report

    I'm always amazed that people want to simplify interfaces, even though there was no demand for it.
    Simple means that you can find everything you need quickly and intuitively. But ADOBE didn't do that with Acrobat. Did they even test this with users before the rollout? Maybe that's where you have to start, testing it with the people it affects.

  • David Stamm commented  ·   ·  Report

    2025-04-09-03T03:50Z
    I agree with others that the former layout of the interface with the bookmarks panel and other panels on the left is _far_ superior to the current boondoggle. At the very least, facilitate control of the interface to let us users arrange such things the way works best for us.

  • Daniel Berlin commented  ·   ·  Report

    The standard view of Acrobat, with bookmarks/page thumbs on left, navigation and buttons on top, and edit/comment/other options on the right was the correct layout. I don't know anyone who wants to use the modern view/annoying way. Please don't break something that works great for all of us.

  • Egbert Souse commented  ·   ·  Report

    As a long....loooong-time user of Adobe products, I have to say this is one the worst "upgrades" I've experienced. All the critiques are spot-on. Old timers like myself see this as a violation of every best practice for interface design. One example would be having users click multiple times to find the most common tools when they were previously accessed with one click. Efficiency indeed.

    Additionally, why can't the pixel dimensions of a file be available at a glance rather that digging around in print production dialog boxes?

    Seems the inmates are now running the asylum at Adobe.

  • Karin commented  ·   ·  Report

    I'm in agreement with the previous commenters. The "new" interface is awful. And now, if we want to use AI tools, we must use it. Boo, Adobe. I'm a software trainer and I talk to a lot of students (professionals) in the US and Canada and only one person out of all of them likes and uses the new interface, all the rest were happy and relieved to go back to the previous one.

  • Kirsten Wickstrom commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is terrible! I cannot edit, e-sign or do anything else properly in this version! It cut down what I am able to do by about half.

  • Boris Vasiliev commented  ·   ·  Report

    "Implemented · Dec 12, 2024" - is it real?
    Or it is an "Exaggeration"?

  • Lora Cawkins commented  ·   ·  Report

    Don't know who's idea it was to not be able to turn of the "helpful" blue bubbles. THEY ARE NOT HELPFUL AND A TOTAL ANNOYANCE IN MY WORKFLOW!!!!!. I've used the Adobe products from version 1. If I want help with something I will google it.

  • Lora Cawkins commented  ·   ·  Report

    Stop rearranging the tools pallet and put it back on the right.

  • Kenny commented  ·   ·  Report

    HATE the new interface. The stupid flowing customize tools blocking my view. Spend the time to make the "Perferences" less cluster and stop messing with the UI. You can fire all of the UI designer. Just back to classic view

  • Dennis Lapcewich commented  ·   ·  Report

    You new Acrobat Pro interface sucks. I reverted back to the "classic" view because it is a straightforward, no nonsense, clean, unambiguous design.

    Think KISS Principle!

  • luke burton commented  ·   ·  Report

    I will explain this to you very simply Adobe… (maybe read it twice so it sinks in).

    If you are using any of your current ‘up to date’ software (Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop…..etc) and it requires the operator to go through more menu windows, more mouse clicks and more keyboard inputs to perform the exact same process from your own software from 5 years ago…. It means you are useless to us.

    We all know the people who design your software don’t actually use your software, but please make a f_cking effort to compare your systems side by side with the same ones from a few years ago. It'll blow your mind how far backwards you have gone.

  • Barkley commented  ·   ·  Report

    Out of all the software I've used in the past 30 years, Acrobat Adobe is BY FAR THE WORST!! I cannot have more than one document open at a time or both/all the documents go blank. Wake up, Acrobat! That's ridiculous!! If I need to compare two .pdfs, I am forced to open one, close it, then open the other one, unless I just open the second document for less than a minute, then I can do what I need to do. If I leave it open longer than that, both documents go blank. Why can all other software allow two documents to be open at a time, but not your product??!!

    Plus, the fact that I cannot move the toolbar to a more convenient location is beyond ridiculous. How hard is it to do what every other software provider can do?

  • Christian Andersson commented  ·   ·  Report

    Happy to have found this post. Agree with everyone. "If it works, don't fix it" I am using Adobe to create complex documents with lots of bookmarks. There are several "upgrades" that are just annoying and makes no sense. Very happy to find the "revert to old UI", but worried that they might force this "great update" in the future.

    (it was not possible to simply vote on this, thus this comment)

  • Joe Phelan commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is a great post and I'm glad I've found it. I'm a professional technical writer and have used Adobe as a key tool for 25 years to finalize and deliver reports. This recent overhaul of the interface is quite shocking. It is clear that it has been designed by a team that lacks understanding of how this software is used and instead appears to be a vanity project for marketing and design grads. I will be moving to another software. Maybe in a few years Adobe will have regained their status as the tool to use.

  • Johan E. Bengtsson commented  ·   ·  Report

    I 100% agree with this post. The "new experience" does not show that I am using Acrobat Reader, there is no way to find out the current version or check for upgrades (and all the other issues mentioned). I used "Disable new Acrobat" (of course).

    I don't know why it is claimed that this has been "implemented". There is no upgrade available that permanently removes this **** UI or even addresses some of the most glaring UI problems.

    (it was not possible to simply vote on this, thus this comment)

  • Colin commented  ·   ·  Report

    Adobe - listen to Henry J. Boitel - this is exactly what's needed.

    Create a modular interface and let us choose, with a few workspaces built in and the ability for us to save our own.

    There are as many use cases for Acrobat as there are users, stop trying to create one interface to rule them all which is based upon the PDF web-plugin.

  • Henry J. Boitel commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree fully with Bevi Chagnon . The current user interface is not an improvement. It is like the doors in the price is right; except many more doors. People who do serious, substantial work with pdfs should not have to go through the chore of learning a new system, that is not intuitive, and that makers the process into a guessing game.

    At the very least, Adobe should provide a menu of a number of different user interfaces that have been carefully researched and tested to meet the needs of a variety of professional and academic users, as well as occasional users. Once a user selects an interface, it should be easy for the user to add functions. Video presentations, concerning the options and concerning user-capable menu design, should also be available.

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    It’s time to expand awareness on this issue.

    Start sharing the link to this forum page, along with a description of your frustrations regarding Adobe's dismissive approach to addressing customer concerns, with editors at the following outlets:

    TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/
    The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/
    ZDNet: https://www.zdnet.com/
    Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/
    Engadget: https://www.engadget.com/
    CNET: https://www.cnet.com/
    Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/
    Tom’s Hardware: https://www.tomshardware.com/
    Techmeme: https://www.techmeme.com/
    For the New York Times, a quick search for their technology editors can provide contact details.

    If enough of us try, maybe we can get someone interested in reporting on this. Does anyone have additional suggestions?

    Adobe appears to be systematically reducing the functionality of software that multiple industries depend on. Their "increase the effort while reducing the functionality" approach to development is frustrating professionals who rely on these tools to perform critical work.

    At the very least, this effort could catch the attention of competitors, highlighting a significant market of professionals willing to migrate to a functional alternative.

← Previous 1 3 4 5 … 33 34