Participant

Question

Adobe InDesign’s Auto Alt Text feature is greyed out and cannot be toggled even when no documents are open, and it causes noticeable delays while generating alt text, impacting performance.

Forum|Forum|17 days ago
February 20, 2026
4 replies
259 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

Stefan Rakete

Inspiring

To set the InDesign script preferences in a startup script you can use:

app.generalPreferences.autoGenerateAltText = false;

app.generalPreferences.addAITagToAltText = false;

to deactivate

or

app.generalPreferences.autoGenerateAltText = true;

app.generalPreferences.addAITagToAltText = true;

The order of these setting seems to matter

Thanks

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your patience and for sharing such detailed observations.

We would like to inform you that three separate bugs have now been logged with the product team for the following issues:

Automatic Alt Text continues to be generated for placed images even though the option is turned off in Preferences > Generative AI and appears greyed out.
The “Auto-generate Alt Text” option is greyed out and cannot be toggled, even when no documents are open.
Auto-generation triggers when adding an image, causing noticeable performance lag.

The team is actively investigating these issues. To help with further analysis and reproduction, we would appreciate the following details from impacted users:

Please confirm your Adobe ID type via https://account.adobe.com/plans.
Let us know how other Generative AI features are working, for example whether Text to Image functions as expected.
Share the UXP logs from your machine. On Mac, they are located at /Users/{USER}/Library/Logs/Adobe/Adobe InDesign 2024. On Windows, they can be found at C:\Users{USER}\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Logs.
If possible, we can also arrange a quick session with any impacted user. let me know.

If you are still experiencing lag or seeing the settings remain locked, a short screen recording showing your workflow and the issue would be very helpful for our investigation.

Thank you again for your continued cooperation. I’ll share updates here as soon as I have more information.

Looking forward to your response.
Abhishek

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @andreww79744202 , @Julie31458673d586 , @tonks_the_auror and @Peter Kahrel,

As the team continues to work through this, they’d like to confirm one more thing. Please completely quit InDesign, then restart your system. After the reboot, launch InDesign again and check whether the Auto-generate Alt Text option becomes active in Preferences.

Let me know if that changes the behavior.

If you’re still experiencing the issue, please share the following details so we can proceed with further investigation:

Confirm your Adobe ID type at https://account.adobe.com/plans.
Let us know how other Generative AI features are working, such as whether Text to Image functions as expected.
Share the UXP logs from your machine. On Mac, they are located at /Users/{USER}/Library/Logs/Adobe/Adobe InDesign 2024. On Windows, they can be found at C:\Users{USER}\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\InDesign\Logs.

If you’re open to it, we can also arrange a quick session with any impacted user. Just let me know.

If the lag continues or the setting remains locked, a short screen recording showing your workflow would be very helpful for the team.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

Hi @Abhishek Rao -- It seems to be working fine now after a restart.

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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