Adobe InDesign: Feature Requests
When entering a new feature request, please provide:
1. Description
2. Why is this valuable to you?
Thank you.
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125 results found
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Add macOS Core Image Filters as Native Object Effects in InDesign (e.g., Vibrancy, Gaussian Blur, Glass Distortion)
Please add support for macOS Core Image filters (e.g., CIGaussianBlur, CIVibrancy, CIBloom, CIGlassDistortion) as native, real-time object effects within InDesign. These filters are already GPU-accelerated and supported natively by macOS. Tapping into this framework would allow InDesign to offer real-time visual effects like frosted glass, material-style blurs, and ambient glow — without the need to pre-render images in Photoshop.
For designers: Effects like vibrancy, translucency, blur, and light diffusion are increasingly common in modern design — not just in UI/UX, but in packaging, promotional layouts, and publication work. These are time-consuming to fake using raster-based workarounds. Having real-time effects within InDesign (or even Photoshop & Illustrator) frames or shapes would be a massive quality-of-life improvement.
For Mac users: Apple has long provided a robust framework (Core Image + Metal rendering) for these effects. Designers on macOS could benefit from faster rendering, live previews, and native integration — leveraging Apple's hardware acceleration and aesthetic standard directly.
For Adobe: Rather than custom-building each new visual effect, Adobe could hook into macOS’s Core Image pipeline. That means:
• Faster development cycle for new effects.
• Free, ongoing updates as Apple adds new filters (via OS updates).
• Exclusive or enhanced functionality for Creative Cloud Mac users — strengthening Adobe’s value proposition on macOS hardware.This could work by including a new "macOS Core Effects" section in the Object Effects dialog.
Only visible when running InDesign (or illustrator/photoshop) on macOS (gracefully hidden or disabled on Windows).
Non-destructive, toggleable effects (like Drop Shadow or Inner Glow).
Optionally rasterized on export or flattening for cross-platform compatibility.This would create parity with Photoshop’s Smart Filters and Illustrator’s Appearance Panel but inside InDesign, and could expand the offerings within those other apps as well.
Supports modern visual aesthetics like glassmorphism and dynamic lighting.
Offers Mac-based design professionals more power, speed, and consistency without disrupting automation-heavy workflows (e.g., EasyCatalog, print pipelines).This feature would modernize InDesign’s effects toolkit, provide Adobe a scalable way to deliver more effects over time, and strengthen Adobe's integration with Apple’s hardware and OS capabilities. It’s a small change with high-impact potential.
Thank you for your consideration!
Please add support for macOS Core Image filters (e.g., CIGaussianBlur, CIVibrancy, CIBloom, CIGlassDistortion) as native, real-time object effects within InDesign. These filters are already GPU-accelerated and supported natively by macOS. Tapping into this framework would allow InDesign to offer real-time visual effects like frosted glass, material-style blurs, and ambient glow — without the need to pre-render images in Photoshop.
For designers: Effects like vibrancy, translucency, blur, and light diffusion are increasingly common in modern design — not just in UI/UX, but in packaging, promotional layouts, and publication work. These are time-consuming to fake using raster-based workarounds. Having real-time effects within…
2 votes -
6 simple updates to make 'Publish Online' better
An open request to Adobe to address at the following:
Customisable links, based off user profile and document title. The current lengthy lines of jumbled letters do not look professional when sending to clients.
Password protected links. Since we're forced to publish on Adobe's cloud, at least give the ability to encrypt the link so it can't be forwarded on. Extra feature here (like frame.io) would be to require the viewers email to view so the author can get data and verify who is viewing the document.
Make it possible to preview a gif loop while designing instead of the current need to publish and wait and republish each time a gif sequence needs to be reviewed.
Make it possible to choose the gif thumbnail that becomes the still image when a client decides to download an offline version.
Make it easy, and elegant to embed and play audio. If it's possible to embed gifs it's strange to me that an audio file of a similar size cannot be inserted and played directly off the document. The player is clumsy and dated, the "play triangle" icon is also old and limiting.
Full screen on mobile - there's no way to look at the full pdf without the URL bar hovering on top, taking up a lot of screen space. Please fix.
- Why are these valuable to me? For the past 3 years I have moved all my presentations to 'publish online' and it has become the industry standard (tv commercial pitches). In these 3 years I've seen no updates or improvements, and the requests above are quite basic (security, customisability, functionality). It feels a lot like this product has been overlooked or abandoned!
An open request to Adobe to address at the following:
Customisable links, based off user profile and document title. The current lengthy lines of jumbled letters do not look professional when sending to clients.
Password protected links. Since we're forced to publish on Adobe's cloud, at least give the ability to encrypt the link so it can't be forwarded on. Extra feature here (like frame.io) would be to require the viewers email to view so the author can get data and verify who is viewing the document.
Make it possible to preview a gif loop while designing instead of…
1 vote -
Urgent: Flatplan workflow feature request for InDesign / Bridge (critical for all magazine publishers)
Hi Adobe team,
We’re honestly desperate at this point.We’ve been trying for weeks to reach someone from Adobe who could even acknowledge this topic — through enterprise support, admin console, chat agents, even our reseller — and it’s absolutely impossible.
It’s insane that even as an enterprise customer, we can’t reach a real product contact to talk about something so fundamental.
We’re part of BurdaMedia International (Czech Republic), publishers of ELLE and ELLE Decoration.But this isn’t just our pain — it’s something every single magazine publisher still using InDesign is facing.
There’s simply no native way to plan or visualize flatplans, page structures, ad positions, or collaborative magazine layouts inside Creative Cloud.Legacy systems like WoodWing or K4 are outdated, overpriced, and don’t fit today’s workflows — yet Adobe still doesn’t offer even a lightweight in-house alternative.
Here’s what we’re asking for:
→ A Bridge-based flatplan module (or workspace) that can visualize InDesign pages as individual, draggable objects.
→ The ability to reorder pages, assign colors or labels (editorial, ad, marketing), and link InDesign or PDF files to each position.
→ Automatic renumbering in InDesign when page order changes.
→ Optional PDF preflight and simple export for final issues.It’s a technically simple concept — no new platform, just a smarter integration between Bridge and InDesign — but it would solve a huge, decades-old workflow gap.
This isn’t just about convenience for publishers.
It’s about Adobe’s relevance in real production.
If tools like Affinity Publisher or Apple (after acquiring Pixelmator) start offering integrated flatplan collaboration, many teams will start moving away from InDesign.We love Adobe, and we’ve built our entire production workflow around it — but right now, we’re forced to sketch magazine layouts in Excel.
That’s… absurd in 2025.Please — could someone from the InDesign or Publishing Solutions product team contact us so we can share our technical brief and prototype concept?
We’re ready to collaborate and show how easily this could be implemented.
Daniel Koehler
Production Workflow Lead
BurdaMedia Extra CZ / Burda International
📧 daniel.koehler@burda.czHi Adobe team,
We’re honestly desperate at this point.We’ve been trying for weeks to reach someone from Adobe who could even acknowledge this topic — through enterprise support, admin console, chat agents, even our reseller — and it’s absolutely impossible.
It’s insane that even as an enterprise customer, we can’t reach a real product contact to talk about something so fundamental.
We’re part of BurdaMedia International (Czech Republic), publishers of ELLE and ELLE Decoration.But this isn’t just our pain — it’s something every single magazine publisher still using InDesign is facing.
There’s simply no native way to plan…1 vote -
User Interface Ideas for newbies
hello
I think a good change for newer users is to make it to where the user interface is more user-friendly. I don't mean the whole app I just mean certain things. For example, one thing would be, is to make the options panels easier to stick. I didn't know that you had to drag the box to one side of the screen to get it to stick to the app. It took me the whole day to figure this out, otherwise, when you move the InDesign app to another screen those panels get left behind. So either have a little help box when moving the tabs called "sticking problem?" and have a small explanation or have the light blue sticking indicator be triggered inches before you reach the edge of the screen and obviously, you'll have to test it out though.Put the "paragraph style" tab default on the paragraph tab. It's not there when I installed it, so I had to highlight something and in the properties and then I had to click the down arrow and click manage styles and poof there it was.
Another fix is to keep the options bar at the top when under the essential workspace. I would watch tutorials where they had this at the top and would this couldn't figure out how to make it work. An hour later I found a video that told me how to fix it. I'm new to this app but it would make sense that the essential workspace having it and the classic essentials would not but they are a switch. just add the option to the essential workspace that would be my fix. I'm sure there are more improvements but I haven't run into them yet
finally put on all your app, an ok box when either user first installs an or get an updated, stating that there's help for the user. And it would say instead of going to google or youtube that there are adobe cloud tutorials ready to go just for the user. :D. I didn't know this until I called customer support to help me with an issue.
Danielhello
I think a good change for newer users is to make it to where the user interface is more user-friendly. I don't mean the whole app I just mean certain things. For example, one thing would be, is to make the options panels easier to stick. I didn't know that you had to drag the box to one side of the screen to get it to stick to the app. It took me the whole day to figure this out, otherwise, when you move the InDesign app to another screen those panels get left behind. So either have a…1 vote -
Feature Request: Language-Aware Punctuation Correction in "Refine Your Text" (Generate Panel)
Hi Adobe InDesign Team,
I would like to request an enhancement to the "Refine Your Text" option available under the Generate panel (similar to the Rewrite feature).
Feature Request: Automatic Punctuation Correction Based on Script/Language
What I need:
When a paragraph is selected, I would like an option under "Refine Your Text" that:
1. First reads and analyzes the selected paragraph
2. Then intelligently applies correct punctuation — but based on the language/script of the text, not a universal ruleThe core problem:
Currently, punctuation correction tools apply English/Latin punctuation rules universally. This breaks Urdu, Arabic, and Persian text because these languages have their own distinct punctuation systems.For example:
- English uses: , . ! ? " " ( )
- Urdu uses: ، ۔ ؟ — (Urdu comma ، Urdu full stop ۔, Urdu question mark ؟)
- Arabic uses: ، ؟ ؛ — (Arabic-specific punctuation marks)
- Persian/Farsi follows similar RTL punctuation conventionsExpected Behavior:
- If the selected text is in English → apply English punctuation rules
- If the selected text is in Urdu → apply Urdu punctuation (rumooz-o-auqaf / رموز و اوقاف)
- If the selected text is in Arabic → apply Arabic punctuation
- If the selected text is in Persian → apply Persian/Farsi punctuation
- Mixed-language paragraphs → detect per sentence or per segment and apply accordinglyWhy this matters — A Global Need:
This is not just a niche request. InDesign is used worldwide by publishers, journalists, and designers working in dozens of non-Latin scripts — Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, and more. Millions of InDesign users across South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia deal with this problem daily.Incorrect punctuation (e.g., using a Latin comma , instead of Urdu comma ، ) is a critical typographic error in professional publishing. Right now, users have to:
1. Copy the text from InDesign
2. Paste it into an external AI tool (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.)
3. Ask it to fix the punctuation
4. Copy the corrected text back into InDesign
5. Reformat and recheck the layoutThis is a slow, repetitive, and error-prone workflow that breaks the entire design process. If Adobe builds this directly into InDesign's Generate panel, it will eliminate this friction entirely — and it will be a major reason for non-Latin publishers worldwide to upgrade to and stay on Creative Cloud.
A smart, language-aware punctuation refinement tool would dramatically speed up the work of millions of users who currently feel underserved by InDesign's AI features.
Proposed Workflow:
1. User selects a paragraph
2. Clicks: Generate → Refine Your Text → Fix Punctuation
3. AI detects the language/script of the selection
4. Applies the correct punctuation standard for that language
5. Shows a before/after preview for user approvalThis feature would make InDesign's AI tools genuinely useful for non-Latin script publishing — a massive, underserved global market.
Thank you for considering this request.
Best regards
Hi Adobe InDesign Team,
I would like to request an enhancement to the "Refine Your Text" option available under the Generate panel (similar to the Rewrite feature).
Feature Request: Automatic Punctuation Correction Based on Script/Language
What I need:
When a paragraph is selected, I would like an option under "Refine Your Text" that:
1. First reads and analyzes the selected paragraph
2. Then intelligently applies correct punctuation — but based on the language/script of the text, not a universal ruleThe core problem:
Currently, punctuation correction tools apply English/Latin punctuation rules universally. This breaks Urdu, Arabic, and Persian text because…1 vote
5586 results found
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select similar
It would be helpful to have a select similar feature for lines and other drawn objects like in illustrator because sometimes I need to change a bunch of things to a different line weight and currently must manually find and change them. I always miss it when I'm working in Indesign instead of Illustrator.
76 votes -
Export PDF Booklet
Instead of having to do "File>Print Booklet" and hassling with making a post script file and making a PDF from that (which doesn't ever seem to work the right way for me) there should be an option to export a booklet PDF. So many of the printers I work with request a booklet PDF and it would make everything so much easier if there was this option.
74 votes -
Bullets and numbering - background or box
When applying a character style in the bullets and numbering tab, all characteristics are applied except for underline/strikethrough options. I noticed that this has been mentioned several times over the years but has not been changed as of CC 12.0.0.81.
If this is impossible to fix, is it then perhaps possible to implement an option to add a background to bullets or numbering, similar to the paragraph rule, which allows for offset, indentation etc.
72 votes -
New Alignment Option: To Bleed
Being able to align to the bleed or distribute to bleeds would be helpful.
72 votesAlign and Distribute to Bleed feature is now available with the latest InDesign Release – InDesign 20.4 Release.
Please update to the latest InDesign Release via CCD app to use this feature.
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Adobe InDesign team
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Improve tables for tagged pdf and accessibility
Tables needs some improvement for better and accessible PDF output.
- There are no options for vertical table headings. I’m not talking about complex tables just simple tables with a custom amount of heading columns from the left or the right. InDesign should tag those cells as <TH> as it does for horizontal table headings or footers.
- Those simple tables and its table headers should get a scope attribute which says if the heading is used for a column or a row. The use of the either the scope attribute or id’s is a PDF/UA requirement.
70 votes -
Zoom using only Scroll Wheel / Pan with the middle mouse button
Today, the majority of softwares have a simply rule regarding using a mouse: scroll wheel to zoom in/out and middle button and pan with middle button clicked.
Simply like that.
So why only PS has the option to use the scroll wheel as zoom and the other softwares from the Adobe CC don't?
And why all the softwares in the Adobe CC doesn't the option to use the scroll wheel to zoom without pressing Alt and pan without the need to use the Spacebar.
If those features are implemented, most people that already use Adobe products will love it!70 votes -
Would like the Links panel to show status, resolution, color information for linked AI and PDF
It would be helpful to be able to view the following information for linked AI and PDF files in InDesign's links panel:
- Color space of linked AI and PDF files
- Status of any links or embedded art in linked AI and PDF files
- Effective resolution for links or embedded art in linked AI and PDF files
70 votes -
Add Australian dictionary to Indesign
Please add Australian Dictionary to Indesign. It was once doable but complicated to add the Hunspell dictionary to Indesign with earlier versions but now is impossible as the files that need changes are locked. I'm sure you have thousands of Australian users paying about $900 per year. This is a fix that I would have thought would only take five minutes to do
70 votes -
70 votes
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GREP code table
Make a GREP code for table in Find/Change box dialogue
70 votesHi All,
Can you explain how this would be used, is the end goal to find a some stuff restricting the search to Tables, or is it something else. It would really help if you can share how you plan to use this new GREP code for tables.
Thanks
Javed -
Ability to change the page of the linked pdf
I would love to see the ability to change the page number of a linked pdf in the links palette - as it stands you have to relink file, click 'show import options' (which then remains on when you don't want it to) navigate to the pdf then click through what page you want to display. It's slow and clunky. A simple icon next to the link where you could select the desired page would speed my workflow up massively.
69 votes -
Need option for auto-fit in table cell style
When I reduce the text size in table, the rows height not fit automatically and its manual work to fit the each row for whole table. It's make easier if we have option to fit the cell height automatically based on content like Object style "Auto-Size"option.
69 votes -
Object Styles: Size and Position relative to spine
When setting an object's position with this feature, one must choose left or right for X position. With Anchored Objects, we can choose for that to be "relative to spine" instead. So instead of "left" or "right", we can choose "inside" or "outside".
This would allow for symmetry on a spread. Example: an object could then extend from the spine, beyond the page edge, through the bleed, whether on a left or right page.68 votes -
EPUB CSS output could be improved quite a lot
So I’m currently in charge of Readium CSS, which is a project related to Readium 2 (link: https://github.com/readium/readium-2), a complete rewrite of Readium SDK, which you may know in the form of a Chrome app – this Chrome app is actually advised by InDesign engineers in the InDesign forums whenever a rendering issue pops up so I assume InDesign engineers know it exists.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of CSS issues piling up right now and InDesign’s output could really do with some significant improvements to allow for better cross-platform support and rendering. Indeed, Readium 2/CSS is meant to be used with any stack/rendering engine, so it won’t be tied to Webkit, and that changes the situation quite a lot.
I won’t necessarily go into details since the User Experience of posting this idea is abysmal (can see like 5 lines of text right now and I can’t expand the textarea) but here’s some issues for which a fix would be greatly appreciated:
if you’re outputting prefixed properties, please output all necessary prefixed properties and the standard one. It’s indeed been a bad practice to not do so and it creates severe maintenance issues for Reading Systems over the long term (for vertical writing in Japanese for example, we’ll have to pre-process stylesheets and add the missing CSS properties so that it can render well on all platforms);
for transforms, which are sometimes used for objects (scaled, rotated, etc.), I can’t guarantee rendering will be OK, especially as only some prefixed CSS properties are output (Kobo now has a specific guideline addressing this issue);
more generally, the default for objects’ output (e.g. images), with the container sized using pixels values, is plain wrong – it only works because we have safeguards to deal with it, so that images don’t become a huge mess. Same for iBooks BTW, which even have a specific CSS declaration in its default stylesheet just because of that.
absolute positioning, which is sometimes used for objects with several images/frames, is explicitly discouraged in the EPUB spec itself for reflowable text so you should assume it will create rendering issues in at least some Reading Systems;
the way embedded fonts are output (font-family) is wrong, and puts a burden upon other authors.
if color is black, you don’t need to output it (Kindle even had to take the liberty of sanitizing this declaration so that it doesn’t create issues in night mode i.e. it removes it entirely).
absolutely-positioned <span> in fixed-layout is now strongly discouraged in the iBooks guidelines because it breaks search and selection (providing users with a subpar UX).
you export several languages in metadata and this is fine. However, we have a spec issue there: there is nothing to define which language is the primary language of the publication, which can create significant edge cases (iBooks, for instance, defines the last language item as the primary language for the publication, which means it may lay out an english book right to left if the last item happens to be arabic because there are arabic characters here and there).
There’s more but listing them there is quite uncomfortable. So please feel free to contact me by mail if you’re willing to improve the current output. That would indeed benefit the whole ecosystem, given InDesign is quite ubiquitous in publishing, and I’ll be glad to help.
So I’m currently in charge of Readium CSS, which is a project related to Readium 2 (link: https://github.com/readium/readium-2), a complete rewrite of Readium SDK, which you may know in the form of a Chrome app – this Chrome app is actually advised by InDesign engineers in the InDesign forums whenever a rendering issue pops up so I assume InDesign engineers know it exists.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of CSS issues piling up right now and InDesign’s output could really do with some significant improvements to allow for better cross-platform support and rendering. Indeed, Readium 2/CSS is meant to…
68 votes -
Add ability to scale PDFs upon export
Add an option to scale to desired percentage upon export of PDFs.
68 votes -
Add the possibility to set cell/line/row height and width in tableformats
We have a lot of tables in our brochures which have to fit in the grid.
It would save a lot of time if I could set, at least, the height of a line as a standard in the table format.
At the moment I have select every table and enter the value. If cells are connected in a row, you have to disconnect them to set the height value. Not very comfortable.
68 votes -
The ability to change languages of the software itself.
We work in a bilingual environment, and constantly need to switch between French and English.
68 votes -
Refine "No Break" by providing suboptions
While hyphenation preferences can be refined at the Paragraph (style) level, Character (style) options only provide a boolean “No Break” attribute which prevents line breaks whatever the location of the text in the layout.
Note, for example, that “Hyphenate Across Column” is available as a paragraph option while the user may actually want to turn on/off column breaks from within a character style. The “No Break” attribute is then too harsh, since it fully disallows line breaking.
Suppose a ITEMS character style is associated to proper names or book titles. We may want to allow regular line breaking for these ITEMS within a frame or a page, but we may need to exclude breaks across frame or page, making sure that ITEMS always appear in full within a visual block.
A way to fix this would be to make the character “No Break” attribute more detailed. Instead of a true/false value, a dropdown list of distinct options could be implemented: [No Break (full), No Break Across Column, No Break Across Frame, No Break Across Page]
Note: The option “No hyphenation” (i.e. “No Word Break”) could be added in that list as well. This would address another feature request which is clearly connected to the present one: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601021-adobe-indesign-feature-requests/suggestions/32293963-add-no-hyphenation-as-a-character-style
Thanks for considering this idea.
While hyphenation preferences can be refined at the Paragraph (style) level, Character (style) options only provide a boolean “No Break” attribute which prevents line breaks whatever the location of the text in the layout.
Note, for example, that “Hyphenate Across Column” is available as a paragraph option while the user may actually want to turn on/off column breaks from within a character style. The “No Break” attribute is then too harsh, since it fully disallows line breaking.
Suppose a ITEMS character style is associated to proper names or book titles. We may want to allow regular line breaking for these…
67 votes -
Expand PublishOnline Analytics
I absolutely love PublishOnline. Is there a plan anytime soon to add to the analytics capabilities with Adobe PublishOnline anytime soon? The features on the dashboard for all published documents are great, but it would be even better to have those same analytics broken down by document - not just views and readers. I'd like to know how much time is spent, for instance, in a newsletter I've published vs. a catalog or flyer. And it would be great to know which documents tend to be read more on tablets vs desktop, rather than all of them as a whole. Many of my documents are quite different from each other and have different audiences. Any plans in the works for adding to the dashboard features?
I absolutely love PublishOnline. Is there a plan anytime soon to add to the analytics capabilities with Adobe PublishOnline anytime soon? The features on the dashboard for all published documents are great, but it would be even better to have those same analytics broken down by document - not just views and readers. I'd like to know how much time is spent, for instance, in a newsletter I've published vs. a catalog or flyer. And it would be great to know which documents tend to be read more on tablets vs desktop, rather than all of them as a whole.…
66 votesThank you all for your support on this feature request. Evidently, stronger analytics, would ensure better decision making.
I’ll be reaching out to some of you to gather more inputs on this feature request.
Your feedback will go a long way to help us define the feature better.Regards,
Abhinav Kaushik (AK)
Product Manager, InDesign -
Preserve filename on PDF export
This is a common issue having looked around the internet for a solution...
PDF export uses the name of the file up until the point where a user changes the name of the PDF before export, then saves the file after the export is done. That changed name is then written into the file and used as this is the expected behaviour.
However, this becomes an issue if you are repurposing the same artwork at different sizes (for example) where you have to manually override the filename on each export.
It would be great if a future InDesign build had a checkbox to PRESERVE THE FILENAME on export thus improving workflow and productivity in busy studios where work is time critical.
This is a common issue having looked around the internet for a solution...
PDF export uses the name of the file up until the point where a user changes the name of the PDF before export, then saves the file after the export is done. That changed name is then written into the file and used as this is the expected behaviour.
However, this becomes an issue if you are repurposing the same artwork at different sizes (for example) where you have to manually override the filename on each export.
It would be great if a future InDesign build had…
66 votesThe feature to “Preserve Filename on PDF Export” was introduced in InDesign 2019 in the PDF Export dialog.
The option is called “Use InDesign Document Name as the Output Filename”.Marking this Feature Request as Completed.
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Adobe InDesign team
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