Hi all, I recently purchased a new Mac Studio M3 Ultra, running 26.2 Tahoe, and I installed Sketchup Pro 26.1.188. The performance of SU has been choppy and “sticky” at best, so I changed my preferences from “new graphics engine” to “classic graphics engine” and received the following pop-up message “WARNING - Your graphics settings are not compatible with your chosen renderer or your GPU’s capabilities. As a result, Sketchup has adjusted your graphics settings to provide the best support for your graphics hardware”. The next time I launched Indigo Renderer, the license was gone, and the program was running in trial mode. I asked the developer to reset the license, and they did. I opened a Sketchup support ticket about the sticky, choppy performance, and they suggested a clean install, which I did. The graphics preferences were reset to the new graphics engine. The choppy, sticky problems quickly returned, and I reset the preferences to “classic graphics engine” and again, I received the pop-up warning about Sketchup adjusting the graphics settings - and again - the Indigo license was deleted! My question is how do I get Sketchup to STOP messing with my rendering license. I don’t know what “adjustments” SU is doing, but it needs to stop interfering with other programs. I have asked Indigo software developers to please reset my license again, and I am waiting for their reply. In the meantime, I am hoping to resolve the issue with Sketchup. I have opened a new support ticket. Anyone run into the same issue and have any suggestions? Thanks.
My guess is that you have two separate issues going on here… an issue with your graphics card and something else messing with your license for Indigo. What computer are you running on? What is your exact display set up? Do you have any tools or software running to “optimize” or automatically back up your local storage?
I have a Mac Studio M3 Ultra. I have a Viewsonic 32” display and a 27” Wacom Cintiq. All drivers are up to date. It’s a brand new machine. I do not have any tools or software running to “optimize” or automatically back up. This issue was specifically caused by Sketchup twice. I was able to re-create the issue.
I don’t know anything about modern Macs but did you install SketchUp correctly or are you running it directly from the downloaded disk image file? Doing that could be one reason why SketchUp is not saving its preferences etc.
I installed Sketchup correctly.
What drivers are up to date? I’ve never updated a graphics driver on a Mac… so… not sure what you mean.
Did you eject the disk image after installing?
What happens if you disable / uninstall Indigo and any and all other extensions? Is the performance better?
Is the performance choppy with just a simple cube / etc?
If you unplug / disconnect the Wacom does performance change?
bmike - I mean the Wacom driver, the Viewsonic driver, the Logitech mouse driver. Yes, I ejected the disk image after installing. After I did the clean install, I only installed the Indigo extension. I have not reloaded any other extensions yet. I use Indigo for my job, so I need to make this work somehow. Disconnecting the Wacom does not affect performance. The performance issues are with the Sketchup tools. For example, guides not letting go after snapping to geometry, the pencil tool not letting go after closing a shape, the lasso tool not letting go after closing a selection. It does not matter if it’s a simple cube or an entire building. I am particularly interested in the warning message that said “Sketchup has adjusted your graphics settings to provide the best support for your graphics hardware.” I would like to disable Sketchup “adjusting” my graphics settings. Does anyone have any actual, direct knowledge of this issue and how to resolve it? Thank you.
I will be honest - I avoided M3 chips because of issues early on with SKP running smoothly. I have no idea if that has been resolved. I went with M2 (but I use VRay).
Do you get performance issues without Indigo installed?
What did Indigo say about the license resetting?
I also never update my OS until I know for certain that my hardware and software will play nice. I won’t upgrade to Tahoe until I see some of these small issues resolved.
Did you recently upgrade to Tahoe? Was it working before?
Can you roll back to Sequoia?
Someone from the SKP team will need to see this - @Colin @TedVitale_SU and @TheOnlyAaron (who already has responded here).
I’m curious how / if your preferences are getting wiped out when you get an error.
bmike - I purchased the computer about a month ago. It comes loaded with Tahoe right out of the box. I did not upgrade - I started from scratch. Brand new clean OS. Not an upgrade. Tahoe has been out for a while, M3 chips have been out for a while, Sketchup 2026 has been out for a while… I didn’t believe I was really taking a big risk here. Jeez.
Yes, I had SU performance issues without Indigo installed. Switching to “classic graphics engine” in Sketchup resolved the performance issues - but deleted my Indigo license. I recreated the problem successfully.
I am waiting on Indigo to reset the license (again) and I explained the issue to them as well. They may have some insight on their end, too.
Looking at the Indigo forum and release history, Indigo Renderer hasn’t had a meaningful update in several years (2022) It predates macOS Tahoe and SketchUp 2026, so it was never designed with either in mind.
Indigo is also not Apple-silicon native (no M-series build, including M3). It runs via Rosetta, whereas recent versions of SketchUp are Apple-silicon native. That mismatch alone is enough to cause instability, UI issues, or outright failures
Expecting Indigo to work reliably with SU 2026 on modern macOS is unrealistic without an updated, Apple-silicon-native release from the developer.
Time to get a new renderer to match your your new Mac.
So I downgraded to Sketchup Pro 2024 and the problem was resolved.
You can also tell MacOS to use Rosetta instead on a modern app - that workaround may also do it.
So that is going to be running the intel version of sketchup on a mac M3 - SketchUp itself will be running slower as a result because there is some overhead from Apple’s intel instructions emulator.
You also won’t be able to use the new graphics engine, which is significantly faster.
Apple will also be turning off Rosetta for Macs in future, so you will do an update and it will stop working. It’s a year or so away, but just FYI.
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