[ID-4257184]InDesign 2025(v20.0) Performance issues: Delay or beach balls on basic operations
Problem:
InDesign Performance issues: Delay or beach balls observed on basic operations on Macintosh
Steps to Reproduce:
No reliable reproducible steps
Impacted workflows:
- Switching to InDesign
- Open/Closing of Document
- Edit/Scroll/Copy-paste/Highlight operation on Text
- Text disappears, illustrations disappear
- Imported or added text turns black until a style is applied.
- Font menu highlight not following my mouse movement
- Text will not change fonts until I click the mouse inside or outside the text box.
- Resize a document window, the corner flies below the screen border
- Click or Drag of the mouse
- Switching between tools
- "Waiting for UXP plugins to finish up remaining tasks."
Workaround:
- Close the MAGNET application
- Revert to InDesign 19.5, No performance lag is observed.
- Restarting the machine and trashing the preferences seems to resolve the issue temporarily
- Disabling any font manager software seems to resolve the issue. One customer confirmed that disabling "Rightfont" resolved the issue.
- Uninstall-Reinstall seems to resolve the issue temporarily
- Turn off Preflight seems to resolve the issue temporarily
Note:
- The issue seems to be specific to the MAC platform only. Impacted macOS (Sequoia, Sonoma, Ventura(maybe), Monterey)
- The issue seems to be specific to the MAC devices
- Apple MacBook Pro M1/M2/M3
- Apple MacBook Air M1/M2/M3
- Apple Max Studio M1/M2/M3
- Apple Mac mini M1/i7 Intel
- The issue exists for both old and new documents
Additional information needed:
- Screenshot of Memory usage while the issue is observed
- Is the "Contextual Task bar" shown? If yes, Disable it from "Window->Contextual Task bar"
- Please follow the below steps for InDesign 20.0.1.32 and InDesign PR 20.1.0.28 on Macintosh
- Open Terminal in full screen mode
- Drag the InDesign application on terminal (e.g. "/Applications/Adobe\ InDesign\ 2025/Adobe\ InDesign\ 2025.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe\ InDesign\ 2025")
- Copy the logs when you start facing the slowness in a text(.txt) file. Share the file with us at sharewithID@adobe.com.
Hi,
Thank you for reporting the issue. We are currently investigating the issue and updated the status in the Uservioce thread. However, the issue is still not reproducible in-house and we need additional information
- Screenshot of Memory usage while the issue is observed
- Is the "Contextual Task bar" shown? If yes, Disable it from "Window->Contextual Task bar"
- Please follow the below steps for InDesign 20.0.1.32 and InDesign PR 20.1.0.28 on Macintosh
- Open Terminal in full screen mode
- Drag the InDesign application on terminal (e.g. "/Applications/Adobe\ InDesign\ 2025/Adobe\ InDesign\ 2025.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe\ InDesign\ 2025")
- Copy the logs when you start facing the slowness in a text(.txt) file. Share the file with us at sharewithID@adobe.com.
—
Adobe InDesign Team
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Gabriele commented
@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. -
Michael Vinson commented
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 applicationNone of these have solved this problem sadly.
Indesign 20.0.1
MacBook Pro with Apple M3 Max Chip
OS - Sequoia 15.1 -
nicky commented
@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.
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Gabriele commented
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 -
Cesar Albornoz commented
Just had to go back to Indesign 19.5.1, there is no way to work with the new version on iMac.
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Redg Ster commented
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.
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Filip Blazek commented
Please fix this. I pay an expensive subscription but I am not allowed to use the recent version, pathetic.
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Anonymous commented
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).
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Michael Lande commented
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.
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DR commented
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.
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Lisa Wright commented
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
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jebou commented
[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. -
elisabethr commented
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.
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Rabbe Sandelin commented
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.
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James G commented
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.
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Samantha Chastang commented
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.
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Samantha Chastang commented
This is a huge issue for my entire team. Please let us know if you are working on this.
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Samantha Chastang commented
This is a HUGE issue. Please take the numerous comments on this lag seriously!
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Alvin Manning commented
I haven't experienced any of the issues you mentioned (granted I'm on Windows 11 but many of my colleagues are on Mac OS and aren't having any issues), and I work in an environment with strict IT protections, multiple servers, and a host of background applications. I wish I could offer better advice but know that the problem might be isolated and/or related to your system settings.
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James G commented
This is the worst update to InDesign I've ever experienced.
I'm about 15 years deep into my design career now, and this is the first time InDesign has been straight-up unusable. I've had to revert back to 2024 as it's impossible to work with 2025.
The issues are constant stuttering, scroll a little it freezes, select text it freezes, move anything it freezes. These little freezes add up and make it impossible to get into a good workflow.
I was happy to see there was an update recently and thought it would fix my problem, it only added to them. Now my 1 key no longer inputs the number 1 but it bolds the text instead, I have to copy and paste 1 from another app now.
I've uninstalled CC, and reinstalled it, I've updated my Mac OS and I've even done a complete wipe of CC, all preferences/cache/relevant system files with a fresh install. These bugs are still there.
How did this product even get signed off? This has massively impacted my work flow, and is absolutely inexcusable for a service with such a high price tag.
Sort it out Adobe, this isn't acceptable.