In the fall of 2019, Apple released macOS Catalina (10.15), a version that brought more than just a fresh coat of paint. It delivered a quiet earthquake for creative professionals: the death of 32-bit apps and a tightened security model. For Adobe Illustrator users — many of whom rely on a finely tuned ecosystem of plugins, scripts, and legacy workflows — Catalina wasn’t just an update. It was a compatibility milestone.
Prior to Catalina, macOS maintained backward compatibility with 32-bit applications. macOS Mojave (10.14) was the last version to support them. With the release of Catalina, the operating system would simply refuse to launch any application not built with a 64-bit architecture. adobe illustrator macos catalina
Catalina’s snapshotting system can bloat Illustrator temp files. Behind the Update: Adobe Illustrator and the Leap
~/Library/Caches/Adobe Illustrator [Version]/ and delete the contents inside (but not the folder itself).