Why is Photoshop crashing on Mac? Apart from physical memory Photoshop uses your hard drive as a scratch disk. It may be that your drive is nearly full (which will affect everything. Look in a finder window at the bottom for what’s left). Check in your Photoshop Preferences > Scratch disks to see how much is assigned to your hard drive.
Or it may be that your preferences/settings are corrupt. Rebuild them by holding down CMD/ALT/CTRL/SHIFT when you launch Photoshop (also works for other Adobe apps).
MEthod 1:
Try resetting your Photoshop preferences. Press and hold Option+Command+Shift (Mac OS) immediately after launching Photoshop. You will be prompted to delete the current settings.
(Mac OS only) Open the Preferences folder in the Library folder*, and drag the Adobe Photoshop CS Settings folder to the Trash.
This action only affects the items found in the preferences dialog box. Numerous program settings are stored in the Adobe Photoshop Preferences file, including general display options, file-saving options, performance options, cursor options, transparency options, type options, and options for plug‑ins and scratch disks. Brushes (and lots of other setting) are not affected by the above instructions for deleting preferences. You may wish to make a screen capture of the settings in the Preferences dialog to reset them prior to deleting of this file.
Also: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html
*To manually delete Photoshop preferences:
Quit Photoshop.
Navigate to Photoshop’s Preferences folder:
MacOS: Users/[user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop [version] Settings
Note:
The user Library folder is hidden by default on macOS. To access files in the hidden user Library folder, see How to access hidden user library files.
https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/access-hidden-user-library-files.html
Drag the entire Adobe Photoshop [Version] Settings folder to the desktop or somewhere safe for a back-up of your settings.
If that doesn’t work, try logging into another account (you may need to make one), still crashing?
Try starting up in Safe mode (hold down Shift Key when booting), still crashing?
You might want to try running a free utility like Onyx: still crashing?
https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html
Also view:
https://www.macworld.com/article/352902/onyx-review-macos.html
https://www.macworld.com/article/224955/how-to-reset-a-macs-nvram-pram-and-smc.html
From Adobe:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/basic-troubleshooting.html
We’re happy to announce the release of Photoshop 23.4. This update includes the fix for this issue. To see the list of all fixed issues, click here
To update Photoshop to 23.4, click “Update” in the Creative Cloud desktop app next to Photoshop. More detailed instructions for updating
