Participant

Answered

InDesign 21.2 Freezing and Becoming Unresponsive During Normal Workflows (Opening Files, Placing Images, Exporting PDFs) on Windows and macOS

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
February 19, 2026
80 replies
5191 views

I’ve been having major issues with InDesign locking up ever since this update. It doesn’t crash so it doesn’t send a report either. At least two times every day, I need to either force quit the app or restart. It is very frustrating!

Correct answer Abhishek Rao

Hi everyone,

Thanks again for all the reports and testing shared in this thread.

To help with the ongoing investigation, could anyone who previously experienced the spinning cursor/freezing while placing or updating files please confirm whether the issue still occurs in InDesign 21.5 or later?

If you can still reproduce it, please try the workaround mentioned earlier: go to InDesign Preferences via the Edit menu, disable the Generative AI options, and test the workflow again to see if that prevents the freeze.

Please share your results here. In the meantime, I’ll continue to keep this thread updated with any further information from the product team.

Thanks,
Abhishek

D

DerOberfranke

Participant

Habe das gleiche Problem mit der Version 21.6 x64

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @DerOberfranke

I’m sorry to hear you’re having similar trouble with InDesign. Would you mind trying the suggestions shared in this help article (https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/desktop/troubleshoot/launch-and-crash-issues/slow-performance.html) and let us know if they help?

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Anubhav

S

samarinaa47520588

Participant

still having this issue

D

Dan Iosif23277824j246

Participating Frequently

The product team is aware of this behavior and couldn’t care less, for the last six months. Oh, what a surprise!

C

Chase Creative Studio

Participant

Any resolve yet on this? For months my InDesign is crashing either when I save it, or when I place an image. It completely freezes and I have to quit it, or it crashes my Windows and I have to restart Windows.

C

courageous_sharpness2333

Participant

This problem is severely affecting my workflow. Was desperately hoping that the latest update (V21.5.1) would help but it just seems to get worse as the months go by. It started off by happening once or twice a week a few months ago, now it happens every few minutes.

Yes, I have tried resetting preferences every single time.

Then I read somewhere that it might be related to accessing artwork off a network or portable drive. So I’ve tried running artwork directly off my desktop, no luck there, same issues.

I thought maybe it’s our standard artwork proofing template, I have recreated it again and again. It seems to help for a bit longer until InDesign freezes again.

Now I’m trying the disable AI method. And have recreated the proof template again entirely from scratch. We shall see. (I will count the minutes until it crashes again!)

Specs:

Windows 11 64bit

Lenovo Ideapad

AMD Ryzen 5 5600H with Radeon Graphics (3.30 GHz)

6GB NVIDIA Geforce GPU

16,0 GB RAM

Assorted SSD drives

C

Chase Creative Studio

Participant

It’s severely effecting my workflow too, they need a fix for this ASAP

M

Michael37345559x3fv

Participant

Yes, this is still happening in V 21.5.1. Turning off all Generative AI options does seem to cure it.

C

Cyril Chadwec37586468pkmi

Participant

I’m having a problem since last week, it suddenly would freeze and crash my indesign, leaving me to not able to use indesign at all. I uninstalled and did a proper clean of Indesign and Photoshop. Please I need help, it didn't do this in the past 2-3 months.

leo.r

Community Expert

what’s your operating system version? also, did the problem start after a recent InDesign update? If so, try to revert to an earlier version as a test: Creative Cloud app > InDesign > 3-dot menu > Other Versions.

will the problem go away?

綾

綾橋75700839

Participant

私も同じです。リンクを更新するとエラーがでて落ちます。早く解決してほしい。

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @綾橋75700839,

Sorry to hear you're experiencing the issue when updating links. The product team is aware of this behavior and is actively working on a fix.

In the meantime, could you please go to InDesign Preferences, disable the Generative AI options, restart InDesign, and test updating the links again? This has been an effective workaround for several affected users.

Please let us know whether this resolves the issue for you. I’ll keep the thread updated as we have more information from the team.

Thanks for your patience,
Abhishek

綾

綾橋75700839

Participant

生成AIオプションを無効にしましたが状況は変わりませんでした。InDesignをアンインストールし下位バージョン(20.5)を入れなおしたら問題なく作業ができています。

S

staceym42219281

Participant

This keeps happening to me. So frustrating. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the program several times now. still glitching and locking up. what is going on??

leo.r

Community Expert

Try resetting preferences and caches:
https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/

Also, if on Mac, make sure Full Disk Access is granted in System Settings > Privacy & Security.

What are your InDesign and operating system versions?

G

graphic designr9873315

Participant

This is happening to mine too! It’s extremely irritating having to force quit the program 5-6 times per day. Please fix this glitch. I have disabled the Generative AI settings already so that is not the issue. I have also had this issue with Premiere Pro to the point that I am using the 2025 version. There is something seriously wrong with this years’ versions.

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