Adobe InDesign Auto Alt Text Enabled by Default and Slows Performance

Forum|Forum|2 days ago
February 20, 2026
2 replies
54 views

I have a top of the line machine. i9-14900k, Radeon 9070XT, 64gb DDR5 RAM, and a fast NVME drive.

InDesign lags more than any adobe program, because of the AI Generated Alt Text, which is enabled by default and I cannot disable it, as I have a pro plan.

Every time I drag an image onto a file, it lags for a good 5 seconds while the AI generated text does its thing. I want to disable this feature fully. I do not use any AI in InDesign.

Please recommend a way to permanently disable this feature, as it nearly doubles my working time on any document, lagging with every adjustment. If I have to edit something in the registry to do so, or block something on a firewall, so be it. Please release me from this torture

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @andreww79744202,

Thanks for sharing all these details. I understand how frustrating this can be.

To help me assist you better, could you please share a short screen recording showing the complete workflow, starting from opening InDesign, opening or creating a document, and then placing an image until the lag occurs?

In the meantime, I’m also checking this with the product team and will share any updates as soon as I have more insights.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @andreww79744202,

Thanks for your patience while I checked this with the team.

To help us investigate this further, could you please confirm your Adobe ID type and let me know if other Generative AI features, such as Text to Image, are working for you?
Moreover, it would also be very helpful if you could share your UXP logs with us. You can find them here:
On Windows: C:\Users{USER}\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Logs

As a next step, please try resetting your InDesign preferences and cache after taking a backup, then relaunch the app and check if the Auto-generate Alt Text option becomes available. Ref: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/setting-preferences.html
If that doesn’t help, please try signing out and signing back in through the Creative Cloud Desktop app and test again.

Once the Generative AI Alt text preference gets enabled, please try placing an image with it turned off(unchecked) and let me know if the lag improves. If the issue continues, a short screen recording showing the lag would be appreciated.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

leo.r

Community Expert

Uncheck it when there are no open documents to disable this for new documents. For documents where the options were already active, you’ll need to uncheck in each doc.

andreww79744202Author

Participant

These options are greyed out for me, as I have a pro plan, which means they are force-enabled. They appear unchecked, and I cannot toggle them. This is true even when I have no documents open. I cannot disable this, and am looking for ways around that.

leo.r

Community Expert

These options are greyed out for me, as I have a pro plan, which means they are force-enabled. They appear unchecked, and I cannot toggle them.

Hmm… I do see that the options are evidently disabled.

Admittedly, I don’t understand the “pro plan” part. I assume it’s a plan with limitations I’m not aware of. Hopefully, others will shed some light on this.

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