Adobe Illustrator beta with native Apple Silicon support is now available

Adobe has started testing its first Apple Silicon optimized version of the Adobe Illustrator app. The move comes less than a month after the release of Adobe Photoshop for Apple Silicon. Users with access to the Beta Apps section of the Creative Cloud app can download beta version 25.3.1 of Illustrator on their M1 Macs right away.

Many core features are already supported in this beta of Illustrator, according to Adobe’s announcement forum post. Until now, users had to run Illustrator on their M1 Macs using Apple’s Rosetta 2 emulation. So, the native version will offer a huge boost in performance.

Adobe Illustrator for M1 Macs now available in beta

Adobe Illustrator’s beta comes a number of months after Adobe also released Apple Silicon betas for its other creative cloud apps including Premiere Rush, Premiere Pro, and Audition. Users who are not able to download betas from the Creative Cloud app can ask to be added to the program, according to the post.

Internal tests conducted by Adobe showed that Photoshop delivers significant performance gains across the application for customers using the latest Macs. According to Adobe, Photoshop for M1 Macs completes most tasks 1.5 times faster than on Intel chips. Users should see a similar boost in performance for Adobe Illustrator.

As Apple continues its rollout of Apple Silicon and more Macs are expected to switch away from Intel this year, updates like this are very important to ensure the best possible performance of an app for users. Currently, more Apple users own Intel-based Macs but that will most likely change very soon as the tech giant will complete the switch from Intel chips to its custom-made chip by 2022.

Adobe Illustrator for M1 Macs now available in beta

Asma Hussain

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