Pen Pressure in Adobe Illustrator for MacOS

In This Article:

How to Enable Pen Pressure

Fixing Pen Pressure on macOS Catalina

Fixing Pen Pressure on macOS Mojave

How to Enable Pen Pressure in Adobe Illustrator

In newer versions of Adobe Illustrator on macOS, pen pressure support requires two things:

• Install a Wacom driver on your Mac
• Install Adobe Illustrator 2020

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Download and install the Wacom driver from their site: Wacom Drivers
2. Illustrator 2020 isn’t available directly through Creative Cloud anymore. You’ll need to request it from Adobe Support. Make sure you have an active Creative Cloud subscription and let them know you need Illustrator 2020 to enable pressure sensitivity.
   Contact Adobe Support
3. Once Illustrator 2020 is installed, open it. You’ll see a prompt asking for permission for "TabletDriver." Click OK. After that, you can close Illustrator 2020 and open your current version of Illustrator, where pressure sensitivity will now be available.
   
4. In Illustrator, go to your brush settings. Change the setting from "Fixed" to "Pressure" to start using pressure sensitivity.

Fixing Pen Pressure on macOS Catalina

If you’ve installed both the Wacom driver and Illustrator 2020 but pen pressure is still greyed out, try these steps:

1. Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy tab > Accessibility. Make sure com.wacom.IOManager is enabled.
   
2. Restart your Mac. When you reopen Illustrator, you should get another prompt for "TabletDriver." Click OK.
   
3. In System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Automation, check that "TabletDriver" is enabled for Illustrator.
   
4. If pressure is still greyed out, open the Wacom Desktop Center app from your Applications > Wacom Tablet folder. Accept any agreement prompts, then quit and reopen Illustrator.
   
   You can also try opening and closing the Wacom Display Settings app if needed:
   
5. Restart your Mac one more time. You should now be able to change the brush option from "Fixed" to "Pressure."

Fixing Pen Pressure on macOS Mojave

If you're using Astropad with Illustrator on macOS Mojave (10.14), you’ll need to allow Automation permissions for Illustrator after installing the Wacom driver.

When you open Illustrator, you should get a permission request like this:

If you clicked "Don’t Allow" by accident, you can enable it manually:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Go to Security & Privacy
3. Click the Privacy tab, then select Automation
4. Under Adobe Illustrator, check that "WacomTabletDriver" is enabled