Solution to fireworks CS6’s selection and cropping tools not working.

UPDATE: Spotify and Google play seem to be causing this unusual behavior, if you encounter the same issue with another program / extension please let us know.

I encountered an unusual problem with my reliable and trusty workhorse fireworks CS6. It is not often that this program lets me down or has any issues, ever since the Macromedia days I have used fireworks without major irritation or frustration, until yesterday.

All of a sudden I was unable to use certain tools like crop, select, wand, for no apparent reason. I did the usual permissions malarky, updates, etc etc… Nothing fixed the issue. Then, I started closing programs in case something was interfering and lo and behold I found the culprit. Chrome. Google Chrome. Of all the applications that I use, it had to be the one that I use the most. Disaster! All is lost! Choose between Chrome or fireworks, but I use them both at the same time so what will I do?!!!!!  AAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!

OK OK, calm down, it’s not that bad really. Fireworks and Chrome had been happily living together for years so it must have been something that changed over the last few days, an update or extension. I remembered that I installed some new extensions last week so I switched them all off and as if by magic, the tools started working again. After switching them on one by one I found the specific extension that was causing the problem… It was the Google Play Music extension.

Screen Shot 2014-09-02 at 14.42.24

After disabling this extension fireworks started working as it should again. Imagine my surprise / relief / annoyance, all at the same time.

Screen Shot 2014-09-02 at 14.42.42

The same issues has been reported with other programs and extensions, including spotify. Whilst writing this post I did a little bit more research to see if anyone had come across this issue and I found an interesting thread on the adobe support forum https://forums.adobe.com/thread/755820?start=0&tstart=0 which seems to be a historical problem, but the last entry is the exact same issue and solution. It also appears that this extension is not the only one that can cause this problem, so if the above didn’t help you visit that thread.

Happy fireworking!

UPDATE 2017: 3 years after this post was published we encountered a similar problem with the crop tool. The above didn’t work and in the end te solution was rather strange. You can find the new post here, hope it helps someone.

7 Comments

  1. Thank you so much, this has been driving me up the wall.

    In my case it is the Spotify app which is causing the failure. This must be because of a recent update to Spotify as the problem only presented itself sometime in August/September 2014.

    I will contact spotify to advise them.

  2. THANK YOU!!!!!! This have been driving me crazy all F day!… What’s the relation between google play and fireworks?… go figure!… so glad I found this post!…

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