It seems to make no difference if it is a single page simple document, or a multi-page document with many links. I can select text, and have to wait for the application to catch up. I use this in Production, and need an application that can keep up with me !
This seems to be just like Acrobat. Slow launches, and sluggish performance in the application.

For a few years now, I have had to wait up to about 10 minutes for Indesign (and Illustrator) to even load. Photoshop pops up within seconds. Maybe the computer I use doesn't meet the minimum requirements. It's 3 years old.
Intel Core i7 9700k
32GB 3200MHz DDR4 RAM
1TB Samsung 970Pro NVME SSD
GeForce GTX1060 6GB GPU (obviously no effect)
Windows 10 21H1

My home system seems much better, taking about 30 seconds to open, which still seems ridiculous. It is also 3 years old.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2950x
128GB 3200MHz DDR4 RAM
2x 1TB Samsung 970Pro NVME SSDs (one OS, one heavy applications)
2TB Gigabyte Aorus NVME SSD (for active files)
1TB OCZ RevoDrive 400 NVME SSD (scratch disk)
1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD (for older files/backups)
1TB Samsung 840 Pro SSD (for leftovers)
2x GeForce RTX2080s in SLI (obviously no effect)
Windows 10 21H1

My ancient January 2006 Windows 7 dual Opteron 290 machine with the OCZ RevoDrive 400, Samsung 840 Pro 16GB 400MHz DDR1, and dual 150000rpm U320 scsi RAID 10 arrays would open the 2018 version of Indesign or Illustrator in about 3 seconds. Has the software really gotten that slow?

i am having super slow performance as well... launching the app, copying or pasting anywhere in the doc; linking photos... it is driving me crazy... i have to do something else for 5-10 minutes whenever I use these functions!!!

MacBookPro
Big Sur v11.4
3.1GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
RAM 16 GB

It takes about a minute to launch the application, significantly up from roughly 10 seconds from before. Interface feels sluggish, and data merge operations (which have always been bad) now take even longer than before. No third party plugins are installed, just most up to date version from Creative Cloud launcher.

Processor AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor 3.60 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 20H2
Installed on ‎22/‎09/‎2020
OS build 19042.746
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.551.0

Excruciatingly slow performance from Indesign 2020. Please fix ASAP.

Slow InDesign 2020 on Mac Mini 4core i7, 16GB RAM - not good, but Im quiet.

Slow InDesign 2020 on Mac Pro 12core Xeon, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD - why?

Thanks a lot for any help.

PS:Illustrator the same issue, but Photoshop is ok - interesting.

Zoom now lags whenever I use the tool and not the keyboard shortcuts. (happens with classic and scrubby zoom)

InDesign 2020 is a hot mess. It's clear Adobe uses paying customers as beta testers at this point, I can't imagine the software has been put through any testing to let it be released in this state.

Amazing how raising the license fee correlates with outsourced quality code.

Perhaps it's time customers put in a class action lawsuit, the software is meant to work when installed, not when patched several months later.

it's almost impossible to work on this version of indesign

It's not just so slow that it takes everything twice as long, but my poor laptop is screaming. I wish I could remember everything I did last night, but if fixed it beautifully - my laptop even went silent from the minimal effort it was now taking. I know for sure I deleted all temp files, disabled all extraneous startup apps, ran a Windows clean up, uninstalled then reinstalled InDesign (and getting rid of all preferences). But then I installed Malwarebytes, which found 96 issues. Deleted all of them and that did the trick. Laptop quieted down to silent immediately and no speed issues.

BUT this morning went into InDesign again, and midway through my work it started again. It happened when I selected a text box and everything froze. My laptop started screaming again. From that point onward it's been pure agony. I repeated everything I did last night, but to no avail.

I don't understand. I'm reading all these comments, and they all echo my problem. I'm on Windows 10, Dell Inspiron 13 7000 series. Core i.7

I've updated my inDesign version to the newest version 14.0.3 due to the application STILL performing ultra slow and spinning after every mouse click. I've tried every fix I read on all of the forums and to no avail it performs so poorly. The Adobe admins clearly state the 14.0.3 update is the sole fix and clearly it is NOT based on the amount of creative cloud users having the same exact issue. I have a huge catalog I am starting this week and it is never going to get done while watching the 'spinning beach ball'.

I am on a iMac 27" Mid-2011
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
2.7 GHz Intel Core i5
910.26GB of available disk space

I just installed Indesign, it is indeed SUPER slow!! Looking for a fix, thank you!