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

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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!

Abhishek RaoCorrect answer

Community Manager

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

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vcimperm

Inspiring

Adobe InDesign 2026 will not run or open launch on my Windows 11 computer!!!!! I recently had an Adobe tech log in remotely and install InDesign for me. It worked for about a week than quit. I have been going back and forth between the new and old versions of InDesign to be able to do my job!

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Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @vcimperm,

I’m really sorry you’re running into this. I understand how disruptive it is when InDesign won’t even launch, especially when it was working fine earlier.

Could you please confirm if you see any error message when launching, or if InDesign simply doesn’t open at all?

In the meantime, I’d recommend going through the troubleshooting steps in this article:
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/crash-on-launch.html#unexpected

Please focus on the section that talks about miscellaneous issues related to corrupt VCRuntime files, as this is a common cause for launch failures on Windows and aligns closely with what you’re experiencing. Let me know if that helps.

If the issue still persists after that, please try launching your system in Safe Mode using the steps here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234

This will help isolate whether any third-party apps or services might be interfering with InDesign.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

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vcimperm

Inspiring

I’ll take a look at what you have here.

The latest InDesign will not even launch. There is nothing. I reverted to using 20.5.2

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WhirledPeasAndCarrots

Participating Frequently

I’ve only recently been having the same issue. The funny thing is -- I am still working off InDesign 2025 and have not updated since the summer because of all the bugs (I’ve been in the middle of a large project and couldn’t risk having issues.) So why is it all the sudden freezing when it’s been fine until now? Tells me it isn’t a 21.2 issue. I’ve been using Adobe products since 2002 and have NEVER had this many issues. The last few updates have been ridiculously buggy and the worst I’ve seen in the nearly 25 years I’ve been using the products.

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leo.r

Community Expert

@WhirledPeasAndCarrots Just to make sure: what’s the exact InDesign version you’re currently using? Also, what’s your operating system version, and how much RAM do you have? (And yes, it’s true that a considerable number of issues is being reported recently, even if some of them were caused by the operating systems rather than InDesign itself.)

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WhirledPeasAndCarrots

Participating Frequently

InDesign 20.5
Windows 11 Enterprise
Processor: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-13700 (2.10 GHz)
RAM: 32.0 GB

And it doesn’t matter how many programs I have open. I could have everything closed except for InDesign and still have freezing. I plan on updating next month; can’t risk it until this large project is completed.

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defaultbjxqpv5wcywy

Participant

Having this same problem and honestly I am just tired of ADOBE, I wish I could replace it. Having to place images on a 100 plus page design presentation and having to force close it to open it again to only work for 3 or 4 images and having to repeat the process is absolutely driving me nuts. I just want ADOBE replaced and looking for alternatives to this insanity already.

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leo.r

Community Expert

What are your InDesign and operating system versions?

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Bonner2552034498qo

Participant

reposting this comment with a screen recording attached: I hope this helps the bug-fixers to address the issue.

I’m a full-time graphic designer and have recently started experiencing a lag issue in Adobe InDesign that appears to be related to screen rendering.

When switching between tabs of open documents, the screen will sometimes turn completely gray. The layout objects are still present and selectable (I can click where items should be), but the document itself does not visually render—almost as if the display or image processor is lagging behind the interface.

This is a new issue that began recently and was not happening before. It tends to occur when switching between multiple open documents.

For reference, my system setup is:

Computer: Apple Mac Studio
Operating System: macOS Tahoe 26.3.1
Application: Adobe InDesign

I wanted to report the issue in case it may be related to the current OS or GPU rendering. Please let me know if there are any recommended troubleshooting steps or if additional system details would be helpful.

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Screen Recording 2026-03-11 at 3.05.46 PM.mov

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Bonner2552034498qo

Participant

I’m a full-time graphic designer and also have recently started experiencing this lag issue in Adobe InDesign that appears to be related to screen rendering.

When switching between tabs of open documents, the screen will sometimes turn completely gray. The layout objects are still present and selectable (I can click where items should be), but the document itself does not visually render—almost as if the display or image processor is lagging behind the interface.

This is a new issue that began recently and was not happening before. It tends to occur when switching between multiple open documents.

For reference, my system setup is:

Computer: Apple Mac Studio
Operating System: macOS Tahoe 26.3.1
Application: Adobe InDesign

I wanted to report the issue in case it may be related to the current OS or GPU rendering. Please let me know if there are any recommended troubleshooting steps or if additional system details would be helpful.

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Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi everyone,

Sorry to hear about the freezing issues. To help investigate this further, could you please share a screen recording showing the full workflow from launching InDesign until the issue occurs? This will help me test it on my end and report it to the product team. Along with the recording, please also share your (Windows/macOS and version). Additionally, when the lag or freeze happens, please check Activity Monitor on macOS or Task Manager on Windows and let me know if CPU, memory, or disk usage spikes unusually high or remains normal at that moment.

Looking forward to hearing back.

Abhishek

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idiotproo67

Participant

Aaaarrrgghhh!!! Having the same problem. First I was the Undo issue, but Ive also been having InDesign Freezing as well. With the (not responding) crap in the Force Quit Applications section. Nothing has changed on my end. Just this seriously annoying mess has appeared since the update… I;m on 2026 v21.2 like everyone else here...

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leo.r

Community Expert

Try to revert to InDesign 21.1: Creative Cloud app > InDesign > Other Versions in the three-dot menu. Some users reported that it fixes the Undo issue at least.

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SomeGuyCalledWim

Participant

Also having major performance and freeze issues with this update. Doesn’t crash - so no report goes out.
I’m on PC, Windows 11, Core i9 Pro, 64gb Ram, Quadro graphics…

Menus disapear after a short time (consistently) - Have to constantly use short cut keys to save, close and restart. (interestingly it doesn’t say that it’s not responding).
Takes FOREVER to open up - Like an imbarrassingly long time, My boss had a go at me for just staring at the screen, I was waiting for Indesign to load...
Constant slow-downs and thinking icon when doing mundane simple tasks.

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AngelaS24

Participant

Hello,

I’m having a similar issue for the past 1.5 weeks. I’m on Adobe Indesign 2026 v 21.2

MacOS Tahoe 26.3

Adobe Indesign will crash when I try to open a file. If I can get it open, it crashes when I save it or try to export a PDF.

I’ve noticed this is mainly when I am opening files from dropbox or google drive via finder (cloud documents). I’m also unable to open documents from my adobe creative cloud. This also still happens with local files, but not as often.

It’s inconsistent when it happens. Some times it’s fine, and then a few files later it decides to crash.

Upon opening InDesign, I also automatically have 10+ background tasks titled “UpdateRecentFiles.” Even if I cancel them, I need to force quit the program.

Things I’ve already done:

Reset preferences
Save files locally
Uninstall the latest version and reinstall
Save files locally
Restart my computer

It seems to work for a time, and then crashes again.

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leo.r

Community Expert

Upon opening InDesign, I also automatically have 10+ background tasks titled “UpdateRecentFiles.”

I think it’s a new issue. At least I’ve never heard about this particular task before, and Google only brings out one result from 2 months ago. That thread basically recommends to just disable background tasks in InDesign entirely:

https://www.reddit.com/r/indesign/comments/1qfn6ad/updaterecentfiles_in_background_tasks/

Also, I know you tried to reset preferences, but did you try to reset caches? Sometimes it’s the one step that helps resolve unusual issues:

https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/

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leo.r

Community Expert

10+ background tasks titled “UpdateRecentFiles.”

p.s. I consider it a bug. Users should not be subjected to cryptic messages whose meaning and purpose is unclear, not to mention that these tasks prevent the user from working with InDesign one way or another.

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KATE_MEGPIE

Participant

In Design keeps crashing, literally every 3 minutes! Every time I upload a photo, the program freezes and the scroll wheel spins. This is impossible to work like that!!! Not to mention the corrupted files that are impossible to recover because the program freezes completely.

What's wrong? Why are we sending reports? Are these just Adobe statistics? Are you planning to do anything about this? This has been happening for a long time. I work on three different computers and have the same problems on all of them.

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Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @KATE_MEGPIE,

I’m sorry to hear how disruptive this has been. Thank you for sharing your experience.

To help me look into this more closely, could you please first confirm the exact InDesign version you’re using and your operating system details?

If you’re currently on version 21.2, I’d also recommend trying one quick test. Please make sure no document is open, then go to Edit > Preferences > Generative AI, uncheck both of the Alt Text related options, restart InDesign, and test again to see if the freezing still occurs.

I also tried locating the crash report you mentioned, but I wasn’t able to find any linked to your account. Could you please submit a crash report using the steps here https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/submit-crash-reports.html and then share the email address you used via DM?

Additionally, please let me know whether you’re working with files saved on an external drive or a remote network location, or if the issue also happens with files saved locally on your internal drive. It would also be helpful to know if this behavior occurs with all files or only specific ones.

I want to assure you that your reports and feedback are actively reviewed by our product team and play an important role in improving InDesign.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

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KATE_MEGPIE

Participant

Okay, thanks for the tip. I unchecked the boxes and it hasn't crashed yet. I wonder, though, why are they checked if it's causing problems?

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