Adobe Firefly Stuck on Generating in Photoshop: Fix Guide

May 27, 2026 · Editorial Team · 6 min read · adobe-firefly troubleshooting error-fix

You make a selection in Photoshop, click Generative Fill, type your prompt, hit Generate, and watch the progress bar crawl to about 30% before it just... stops. No error. No output. Just an infinite spinner that will sit there for 20 minutes if you let it. Or it finishes processing but the Properties panel never populates with generated variations. This is one of the most-reported Adobe Firefly issues among active Photoshop users, and it can happen even with a solid internet connection and a perfectly valid Creative Cloud subscription.

What this error actually means

Adobe Firefly's generative fill in Photoshop works by sending your selection (as an image mask) along with your prompt to Adobe's Firefly API servers. The generation happens entirely on Adobe's cloud infrastructure, not locally on your machine. When it gets stuck, the request either never reached Adobe's servers, reached them but didn't return a response in time, or the local Photoshop plugin lost its connection to the response stream mid-generation.

Photoshop's Generative Fill feature communicates with Firefly through a local Creative Cloud Desktop agent that mediates authentication and API calls. If that agent is in a bad state, the connection between Photoshop and Firefly's cloud is effectively broken even if your overall internet connection is fine.

The "stuck" state rather than an error message is a quirk of how Photoshop handles timeouts from the Firefly API. Rather than surfacing a clear failure, it continues showing the progress animation and waits indefinitely.

Quick fix (when you need it working in 60 seconds)

Cancel the current generation by pressing Escape or clicking Cancel in the Properties panel if it's accessible.
Close the Contextual Task Bar if it's open (Window > Contextual Task Bar to toggle).
Quit and relaunch Creative Cloud Desktop from your system tray (Windows) or menu bar (Mac). Wait 30 seconds for it to fully restart.
Go back to Photoshop, make your selection again, and try Generate.
If still stuck: sign out of Creative Cloud in Photoshop (Help > Sign Out), sign back in, then try again.

Why this happens

Firefly getting stuck in Photoshop has identifiable root causes across different categories.

Creative Cloud Desktop agent issues. The CC Desktop app is a persistent background process that handles all authentication tokens for Adobe services. If it crashes or enters an error state (which happens more often than Adobe publicly acknowledges), Firefly generation calls silently fail because they can't get a valid auth token. The symptom is a stuck progress bar rather than an auth error message because Photoshop's Firefly plugin doesn't surface the token failure clearly.

Firefly API server overload. Adobe's Firefly generation servers handle demand across all Creative Cloud applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, Express, and others). During peak hours or after a major feature update when usage spikes, API response times can exceed Photoshop's internal timeout threshold. The request was technically received and processed, but the response arrived too late for Photoshop to handle it.

VPN and firewall interference. Firefly's API calls go to Adobe's servers over specific ports. Corporate VPNs and some consumer privacy VPNs block or throttle these connections. Even if you can browse the web fine on the VPN, Firefly's specific API endpoints may be filtered.

Large selection sizes. Generative Fill sends the contents of your selection area as image data. Very large selections (over 4000x4000 pixels, or large selections from very high-resolution documents above 150 MB) can time out during the upload phase before generation even starts.

Outdated Photoshop version. Adobe updates the Firefly API protocol regularly. Running Photoshop 2025 (version 26.x) when Adobe has updated the API for features available in the 2025 update can cause compatibility issues that manifest as stuck generation.

Network interruptions during long generation. Generative Fill for complex prompts or large selections can take 30-90 seconds. A brief network hiccup during that window can disconnect the response stream. Photoshop doesn't retry automatically; it just stays stuck.

Permanent fix

These steps address each root cause and prevent recurrence.

Keep Creative Cloud Desktop updated and running. Don't close CC Desktop to save memory. It needs to stay running for Firefly to work. Check for CC Desktop updates: open CC Desktop, click your profile icon, and look for "Check for Updates." Keep it on the latest version.
Update Photoshop to the current release. In CC Desktop, go to Apps > Photoshop and check for updates. As of early 2026, Photoshop version 26.4 contains stability fixes for Firefly generation timeouts that were present in 26.0 through 26.3.
Add Adobe's domains to your firewall/VPN allowlist. The domains required for Firefly: firefly.adobe.com, api.firefly.adobe.com, ims-na1.adobelogin.com. For corporate environments, your IT team needs to allowlist these. For VPN users, add them to your split tunnel exclusion list.
Reduce selection size for large documents. For documents above 100 MB, shrink your selection area to under 2000x2000 pixels before using Generative Fill. If you need to fill a larger area, tile the generation in sections and blend the results. This is more work but avoids the upload timeout.
Clear the Firefly plugin cache. On Mac: delete ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Firefly/ and restart Photoshop. On Windows: delete %AppData%\Adobe\Firefly\ and restart. This clears corrupted local state that can cause persistent failure.
Re-authenticate your Creative Cloud session. In Photoshop: Help > Sign Out. Quit Photoshop. Open CC Desktop, sign out there too. Sign back into CC Desktop first, then open Photoshop and sign in. This forces a fresh auth token chain and clears stale token issues.
Test Firefly in Firefly.adobe.com to isolate the issue. Go to firefly.adobe.com in your browser and try generating an image with the same prompt. If it works in the browser but not in Photoshop, the issue is Photoshop-specific (plugin, cache, or CC Desktop). If it fails in both, the issue is account, network, or server-side.
Disable hardware acceleration temporarily for diagnosis. In Photoshop: Preferences > Performance > uncheck "Use GPU." Restart Photoshop and try Generative Fill. If it works without GPU, there may be a GPU driver conflict affecting the rendering pipeline that Firefly uses for result display. Update your GPU drivers if this is the case, then re-enable GPU acceleration.

Prevention

The single biggest prevention measure is keeping your Creative Cloud Desktop and Photoshop both updated. Adobe patches Firefly-related generation issues in Photoshop point releases, and these fixes don't reach you if you're deferring updates. Enable automatic updates for CC Desktop specifically (CC Desktop > Preferences > Creative Cloud > Enable auto-update).

Before starting a long Firefly-intensive session, do a quick test generation on a small selection with a simple prompt. This confirms your Firefly connection is healthy before you're three hours into a complex retouching job.

If you work in a corporate environment, document your network exceptions for Firefly's domains and keep that documentation current. Adobe occasionally adds new API endpoints (for new Firefly features) that need to be added to your allowlist.

For documents above 150 MB, consider saving a flattened copy at a smaller pixel dimension for your Firefly generation work, then applying the results to your original high-resolution document. This avoids the timeout risk from large file uploads and speeds up the generation cycle significantly.

When the fix doesn't work

If you've updated Photoshop and CC Desktop, cleared all caches, re-authenticated, tested on firefly.adobe.com directly, and Firefly is still stuck in Photoshop, this is a case for Adobe support. File a ticket at helpx.adobe.com with: your Photoshop version number (Help > About Photoshop), your OS version, a description of what happens, and the result of your firefly.adobe.com test. Adobe's Photoshop support for Creative Cloud subscribers has a 24-hour response SLA.

During extended Firefly outages or while waiting for a fix, Generative Fill-like functionality is available in Canva's AI editing tools and in the Photoshop alternative Affinity Photo 2 with third-party AI plugins.