InDesign 2020 (and Illustrator) crashing on launch on Catalina Mac OS

I'm having this same issue. InDesign 2020 and InDesign 2021 both have same behavior, where the application stalls every time I open it. Have tried all the steps outlined in Adobe's crash page as well as wiping all Adobe assets from my computer using Adobe Cleaner, and reinstalling from scratch. The application appears to open but as sson as I try to do anything at all (like open and save preferences) it begins to stall with colored wheel of death, and I have to force quit. I've checked and rechecked read and write permissions on preferences, caches and all application support file folders, but no joy.

Yes, this has been happening to me every time I open InDesign 2020 or Adobe Illustrator 2020. Am here looking for a solution (along with many others!)

I'm having the same issues. I'm paying an expensive CC subscription and have lost many days of work. 

Photoshop, Illustrator and inDesign 2020, all freeze when opening, running Catalina OS. Brand new iMac, but it was happening on the old one too. I've tried all Adobe's recommended fixes. No results. Sometimes an Adobe app will randomly work after several restarts. I adjust all my preferences for the threeapps. Long process. Then the next day, same problems. 

I am an art director with deadlines working from home. I can't do my work.

Same here. InDesign and Illustrator 2020 both stopped working 2 days ago and I tried all of the same remedies (I had no 3rd partyplug-ins.) As a CC subscriber, how do I download 2019 versions?

Same issue... Can't launch ai 2020

FWIW, I'm having the same issue. Illustrator 2020 was working for me last week, although unreliably. It crashed several times, but it would open. Now it will not open at all. Once it starts to move past the intro graphic, it immediately crashes. Every. Single. Time. I'm losing time and money here Adobe. 

MacOS 10.14.6

Update to this post: Illustrator has begun freezing on startup again after it was initially working after disabling the Home screen. InDesign 2020 continues to work okay after disabling the Home screen, but Illustrator now freezes up when launching and initializing plug-ins. It freezes specifically on initializing the "SmartEditUI.aip" plug-in according to the loading splash screen.

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Original post:

I was able to get both InDesign and Illustrator to launch after some further experimentation.

The bug appears related to initializing the "Home" screens in both apps. Like some others have experienced, the apps would appear to load almost all the way, but then hang/freeze before they became usable, causing the user to have to Force Quit the frozen app.

I was able to get the apps to launch by booting into Safe Mode, where the apps would launch successfully, then disable the Preference to show the Home screen, quitting the apps, then restarting in Normal mode. Then the apps would launch since they weren't getting hung up trying to load the Home screen.

If you're running into a similar issue, try this:

1. Boot your Mac into Safe Mode (hold Shift while your Mac is booting).

2. Try launching the app that's freezing when starting up.

3. If it successfully opens in Safe Mode, go to Preferences, and find/disable the preference "Show Home screen when no documents are open".

4. Quit the app and restart normally. The app may load successfully now. This worked for both Illustrator and InDesign for me.

So there must be some bug with the apps trying to load web-based content into these "new-fangled" Home screens. I've never liked using the Home screens anyway and usually disable them, but couldn't do that without first booting into Safe Mode.,

-R

Hi all,

The same is happening for me on MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6 (17G65). When I launch InDesign 2020 it displays the loading screen, then immediately crashes after loading the main window (I see it for a brief moment). 

I've tried:

• Restarting my mac
• Uninstalling previous InDesign versions
• Reinstalling InDesign 2020
• Deleting the InDesign files in ~/Library/Caches and ~/Library/Preferences
• Deleting InDesign preferences on startup by opening while holding CMD+OPT+CNTL+SHIFT.
• Signing out and in of Adobe CC

Any help and/or fixes would be appreciated.

Hi there, 

Sorry to hear about the trouble you are facing with InDesign and Illustrator. We will need to troubleshoot and indentify the cause of the issue. Since you have already rolled back to the 2019 editions, I will recommend, whenever you wish to try the 2020 version please install both the software without importing previous settings and preferences and see if that works.

In case if it still doesn't work please try resetting the preferences manually by following below mentioned steps:

For InDesign: 

• Close all adobe applications 
• Go to Locations:  
• ~/Library/Caches 
• ~/Library/Preferences 
• Rename Adobe InDesign and com.adobe.indesign to Adobe InDesign.old and com.adobe.indesign.old 
• Launch InDesign from the CC 

Disclaimer: Please note that resetting preferences will remove all the custom settings and InDesign will launch with default settings. This way all your old settings will be saved in .old folders and InDesign will recreate new folders with default settings.  

For Illustrator:

• Close Illustrator.
• Click on the Finder icon on the dock, choose Go on the top> Go To Folder.
• In the Go To Folder dialog box, type "~/Library". Click Go.
• Open the Preferences Folder > rename the Illustrator  24 Settings folder to Illustrator  24 Settings folder.old
• Under Preferences, Open Adobe folder and rename Adobe Illustrator folder to Adobe Illustrator.old
• Go back to library->open caches->rename  com.adobe.illustrator to com.adobe.illustrator.old
• Go back to library->open application support-> open adobe->rename the Illustrator  24 folder to Illustrator  24 folder.old

Let us know if this works or if you need any further help.

Regards

Rishabh