Having trouble opening a project in Descript? If your project isn’t loading—or you see a message like "This is taking longer than normal"—there are a few things you can try to get back on track.
If your project opens but runs slowly, lags during playback, or doesn’t respond as expected, check out our tips for improving performance: Playback and performance troubleshooting.
General troubleshooting steps
Project won’t load or open
If your project won’t open, or you're seeing long load times or errors, the steps below may help:
- Check your version history: Try opening a previous version of the project. Learn how to restore a version.
- Web users: Log out of Descript, clear your browser’s cache and cookies, then sign in again.
- Desktop app users: From the top menu, go to Help > Reset app data to refresh your local app state.
- Fully quit and relaunch the Descript desktop app: Restarting the app can help clear temporary glitches. Press control + click on the Descript 'D' icon in the menubar and select Quit Descript Completely.
- Temporarily disable VPNs or antivirus software: These can sometimes interfere with project loading. See how to resolve network issues.
- Reduce project size and complexity: Projects with long compositions and lots of edits can slow things down. If you're seeing performance issues or load failures, try breaking your work into smaller compositions or moving content into a separate project. There's no one-size-fits-all rule — your device specs also play a role — but if things start lagging as your project grows, this could be the reason. Learn how to copy a composition to a different project.
Fully uninstall and reinstall Descript
If issues persist, a clean reinstall of the desktop app can help resolve deeper issues with app performance or file access. Follow these steps to fully uninstall and reinstall Descript.
Contact support
If none of the steps above resolved the issue, please contact support or reply to an existing request—we’ll take a look!