@Gabriele @Filip Blazek
Oh my gosh! The Document Fonts folder workaround appears to work for me as well! When I remove that folder from my package the file runs as normal. Hopefully this helps the InDesign team diagnose and patch this issue.

I can confirm, total slowdown of InDesign occurs only for documents with Document fonts folder. If I delete the folder, the document does not have fonts, but the behavior of the app is quite smooth. Once I restore the Document fonts folder, working in InDesign is impossible.

I recently had my 2019 Mac Pro go down, and IT ended up wiping and reinstalling everything, including updating my OS to Sequoia 15.1.1. After that, I updated Creative Cloud to InDesign 20.0.1—and wow, what a nightmare. It’s incredibly sluggish. Opening the app? Wait. Opening a file? Wait. Moving a window? Nothing happens at first, then a bit of movement, followed by the spinning beach ball... and more waiting. I tried merging a file, and what used to take seconds now feels like an eternity. Basic, insert type bar to type text, i have to wait, and wait. Is anyone else experiencing similar issues?

@Michael Vinson
A question, do you use the "Document Fonts" folder?
If yes can you try to work without it?
I'm just asking to verify, since in my case it worked and I have no issues.

I've had this issue ever since first downloading the newest InDesign. It will work as normal for maybe a few actions to start and then rainbow wheel after rainbow wheel of lag trying to do the most basic functions (copy and pasting both inside program and from something like Acrobat or Word, scrolling, typing, drawing shapes, moving objects, etc.). The delay is usually 1-2 seconds, sometimes upwards of 5.

I've followed my Activity Monitor when the issue occurs and the reading under "% CPU" will usually jump up somewhere between 50-85% with the rainbow wheel spins. For comparison, I also watched the Activity Monitor while working in a file in InDesign 19.5.1 (no issues), and it would stay consistently between 20-30% during all the same actions.

I've tried
-uninstall/reinstall of Indesign 20.0.1
-"Reset Preferences on Quit” under InDesign-Preferences-General,
-closed Indesign and held down cmd opt ctrl and shift at next startup to get question to reset preferences, selected “Yes” as application started up
-Renamed ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.indesign and ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign (added “old” to the end of each as noted on Adobe Community site) and restarted application

None of these have solved this problem sadly.

Indesign 20.0.1
MacBook Pro with Apple M3 Max Chip
OS - Sequoia 15.1

@gabriele

I also noticed a slowdown when I hover over the TEXT>FONT menu.
I also have fonts managed by external software that saves them in a folder other than the Windows system folder.
This happens on Illustrator and Indesign 100%, on Photoshop I don't know, I never use the fonts there.

Let's say that on the threshold of 2025, Adobe's CC is very poor in terms of performance.

I often have slowdowns and the spinning beach ball when I open several documents and when I have to copy and paste text even from Word and Acrobat.

I almost always use the "Document Fonts" folder, but I noticed that if I remove (or rename) the "Document Fonts" folder then I no longer have slowdowns and copying the fonts I need into the "Fonts" folder inside the Adobe Indesign 2025 folder (in Applications) everything works correctly, without the spinning beach ball.

Indesign 20.0.1
MacOs Sonoma 14.7
Apple M1 Ultra

Just had to go back to Indesign 19.5.1, there is no way to work with the new version on iMac.

Indesign 20 is unusable. I've tried just about every tip and trick I could find on the web. But I still have this bug that makes the software unusable. I've reinstalled version 19.5, which works perfectly.

Please fix this. I pay an expensive subscription but I am not allowed to use the recent version, pathetic.

This issue has been driving me a bit crazy. I am not sure this will help, and I have yet to try this with more samples, but I have one test where I opened a file that would reliably cause the application to slow down while switching in and out between Indesign and any other App. I had only Finder and Indesign running, so it was those two I was switching between for this test. I have a file that has a few Paragraph style that were based on one-another and had been updated along with Indesign over the last several years. In my test, I deleted all paragraph styles and selected keep formatting on all. The slowdown still occurred, but when I closed the document quite and then restarted the app and opened that document the slowdown was improved. InDesign didc lag while opening the document, but this passed and then was gone after that intial few seconds. My next test I will be a bit more systematic and see if I can pinpoint which style is causing the issue. I have had problems in the past with things buried deep down in some style causing a strange issue (iirc, it was inability to delete a particylar color swatch).

InDesign 20.0.1 is slow to switch back to the front application when copying and pasting into InDesign 2025 is slow on my M1 Max MacBook Pro. Switching back and forth from Workfront Proof, Word, Excel, or any application is slow as InDesign takes a full 1 to 2 seconds to come to the front by clicking on the document window or using the application switcher.

Please remove this annoying delay.

Thank you.

This is truly unworkable.
Incredibly sluggish, spinning beachballs and crashes.

And as if being productive wasn't enough of a struggle, we also have to deal with the horribly annoying popups that we can't turn off and that keep coming back over and over again.

You don't wan't to know how many (unbillable) hours are wasted just staring at a spinning beachball, or resetting preferences.

Same story here. Recently upgraded to InDesign 2025, now in every document ANY action causes the beach ball with a huge pause in workflow. Totally unworkable.

2019 Macbook pro, running Sequoia 15.1

[today 4/12/24]
Since 20.0 versio , InDesign is extremely slooooowww, almost unusable. Almost every action from selecting objects, resizing objects, or moving objects comes with a really slow reaction time.

It seems to happen on my machine after I open FontAgent which automatically "opens at login". So I have to open System Settings and delete it from "opens at login" which seems to fix the problem.

UPDATE - sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Ugh.

Unusable. I thought beach balls were a distant memory now, with all the processor advances in later years.. Now I see them in ID 25 doing any small action. Vibes of old PageMaker – maybe time is now ripe for a total re-write of the whole application? ID seems awfully creaky.

There's plenty of people referencing to the stuttering issues on Reddit, it seems to be exclusive to Macs, but I might be wrong.

https://www.reddit.com/r/indesign/comments/1g4vtwa/indesign_stutters_after_updating_to_2025/

https://www.reddit.com/r/indesign/comments/1h27jeo/indesign_2025_slow_and_buggy/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Adobe/comments/1g9w4j2/adobe_indesign_2025_slow_and_laggy/

https://www.reddit.com/r/indesign/comments/1guscm1/indesign_2025_is_horribly_slow/

The 1 key issue is kind of mad though, haven't ever seen anything like it. In hindsight, it might have been native to the file I was working on at the time, the person who built it has a habit of doing weird stuff when building documents. Either way, the stuttering/freezing is a much bigger issue.

I ended up reverting to InDesign 2024 because 2025 is such a mess. Hopefully, the stuttering/freeezing gets patched out soon. I don't like upgrading this early, but someone at my agency jumped the gun forcing everyone else to upgrade for file compatibility.

This issue is not limited to Mac. We are having it across our entire team - a delay of up to 3 seconds when switching between programs. This is a HUGE issue for productivity that caused my team to downgrade back to 2024. I keep coming back here hoping there is a fix, but I don't see it being taken as seriously as it should be.

This is a huge issue for my entire team. Please let us know if you are working on this.