InDesign 21.2 on macOS Tahoe 26.2: Undo Greyed Out and Cursor Tool Stuck

Hi Nik, operating system & InDesign have both been updated but the problems happened before and seemed to have gotten worse after. It’s hard to tell though as I can’t associate the ‘crashes’ and glitches with any specific task. 

MacOS Tahoe 26.6.2
InDesign version 21.5.1

• I’ve had to manually re-instate scrubby scroll while super busy
• Quite often the cursor will get stuck on the previous action, for example zoom cursor will display after the shortcut and won’t revert to the black cursor, or stuck on marquee, or whatever (I think when using shortcuts)
• When i import an image, there is sometimes (often) no crosshair cursor or preview of the file
• The cursor issue is almost a warning now that ‘undo’ is disabled and I need to force-quit (when I do, I see the ‘not responding’ error message in the force-quit pop-up window)

These issues first came up about 2 months ago and seems to have intensified. I thought it was my desktop because I’m using a refurbed machine but when I tested it on my laptop, the same things were happening. I also freelanced on-site on one of the beefy macs and still the same things were happening, although less frequently (perhaps down to their firewalls and limitation on which version they could download, I suspect I was on an older version of InDesign).

When I can’t rely on the software to produce work quickly and at a high standard, I need to start thinking as a ‘business’ and the product is consistently letting me down. My loyalty is waining – if I had the time to learn Affinity, I would’ve changed over already but now… the cost (£60 /m), unreliability, Adobe’s seemingly shifted focus away from designer software to AI that replaces entire marketing teams, I can’t see why I’m bothering sadly. 

Not to mention the reduced reliability on the accessible tools in Acrobat – crashes constantly just from trying to change the tab reading order. Basic stuff!

It’s super easy, keep updating and innovating but remember your core market audience who rely on these programmes (and pays through the nose for it) to serve our clients. Also, upselling from our point-of-view has taken a downturn, I don’t recommend Adobe Express for templated packages to my clients because of the unreliability, difficult and unintuitive interface, I recommend Canva, that’s not ideal! These are potential growing businesses that, when looking to create their own marketing/design team, most likely will just upgrade their canva account. There’s a wider marketing position Adobe needs to pay attention to when failing to meet the minimum requirements for us designers. 

Sorry Nik to pile on – I’m grateful you’ve replied, the poor experiences have compounded over time and is frustrating but a daily experience to us designers out there.