Articles on: Support & Troubleshooting

Scriptation is running slowly or crashing.

If Scriptation is running slowly or crashing, the fastest fixes are to close extra tabs, restart the app, restart your device, and make sure you're on the current version. The steps below walk through each — start at the top and work down.

Scriptation can comfortably handle very large PDFs (100 MB+), but performance can slow when several big scripts and other apps are open at once. When memory or storage runs low, your device throttles speed to avoid overheating — and in extreme cases, the app may crash.

⚠️ HEADS UP: Do not delete and reinstall Scriptation to fix performance issues. Reinstalling on iPad or iPhone removes every file saved in On My iPad / On My iPhone permanently — the only way to potentially recover these files is to restore your entire device from an iCloud backup. If none of the steps below resolve the issue, contact us first using the Send us an email button at the bottom of this page.

Quick fixes (try these first)

Close extra tabs. Keep tabs open only for files you're actively working on. This frees memory for the scripts you actually need.

Restart Scriptation. Force-quit the app and reopen it.

Restart your device. A full power cycle resolves a lot of temporary issues.

Update Scriptation. We ship fixes and performance improvements often. Check the App Store on your device to make sure you're on the latest version.

Deeper troubleshooting

Optimize your layers. A Layer Optimization shrinks the document's file size — that saves space on your device and helps Scriptation run faster.

Turn on the Thumbnail Icon setting. In the Settings menu, enabling the Thumbnail Icon swaps the document preview for a generic file icon. On older devices, this can noticeably reduce memory use.

Quit background apps. The more apps running in the background, the less memory available to Scriptation. Close anything you're not actively using.

Archive scripts you don't need. (iPad / iPhone) Move older scripts out of the On My iPad / On My iPhone folder into cloud storage or onto a Mac. Best practice: copy the files first, confirm they're safely in the cloud or on the Mac, then delete the originals from your device and empty the Trash.

Check device storage. (iPad / iPhone) Go to Settings → General → iPad Storage (or iPhone Storage) and see if you're running low. Remove apps you no longer use — but check first; some apps delete their data when removed.

Update your operating system. Scriptation is built for the current versions of iPadOS, iOS, and macOS. Open the Settings app and choose Software Update to install any available OS updates.

Consider a device upgrade. If you're consistently working with very large scripts on an older device, a newer iPad, iPhone, or Mac with more memory will give you a noticeably smoother experience.

⚠️ HEADS UP: Already crashed and can't reopen Scriptation? See Scriptation keeps crashing on launch — and please don't delete the app as a first step. Deleting Scriptation removes all locally stored files.

Still having trouble?

If none of the steps above resolve the issue, we'd like to take a look. Use the Send us an email button at the bottom of this page and include:

The device and OS version you're on;
Which scripts the issue happens with (one specific file or all of them?);
Where those files live (iCloud, Dropbox, On My iPad, etc.);
A short screen recording of the slowdown or crash if you can capture one.

The more detail you can include, the faster we can pinpoint what's going on.

What's Next

Are there any Scriptation best practices?

What hardware does Scriptation work best with?

How do I find my IDs for support?

Scriptation keeps crashing on launch

Updated on: 01/07/2026

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