Participant

Answered

InDesign 21.3 freezes with endless loading cursor when placing images on Windows 11

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
May 3, 2026
41 replies
2771 views

Hi

Each time I import an image into Indesign, the image loads okay, but I get the blue swirling ‘loading’ icon that never stops. I can save my document, and the menus still work but I can’t work on the actual page, and the only way I can clear it it to Force quit Indesign using Task Manager.

This started about 2 weeks ago, and was fine before and I haven’t made any changes to my PC. I thought maybe it started after an update of Indesign, so I tried reverting to an older version, but still had the same problem.

I have tried re-installing Indesign. (version21.3) I use Windows 11.

I really hope you can help please?

Thanks Chris

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

Mike Witherell

Community Expert

InDesign GenAI Blocker Startup Script

https://trainingonsite.com/235-indesign-generative-ai-blocker.html

This will turn off the Alt-Text preference whenever you start InDesign.

Mike Witherell

dnbnc

Participating Frequently

My version of InDesign is 21.5.1 on Windows 11. All up to date.

And now, I disabled AI functions to see if it fix the loading forever cursor problem.

dnbnc

Participating Frequently

Same here! I only insert a new .ai image (same as before, but only changed a text in the .ai image)… No reason to hang, but the load cursor stays forever.

Agenturaxact

Known Participant

for my work: disabling both Generative AI options under Edit > Preferences > Generative AI

G

graceful_interest9076

Participant

We literally pay so much to be able to use these programs. We shouldn’t be still having this issue are months.

I have the same issue as others, I have to go to task manager and force exit. The endless blue circle.

Please, get onto it.

dnbnc

Participating Frequently

Yes. Costly, an full of bugs! But they are fast to increase the price on subscriptions.

Agenturaxact

Known Participant

21.5.1
It seems that after disabling the AI features, the issue stopped occurring. However, I will not re-enable them for investigate whether it is working properly now...

C

Carla_Midford

Participating Frequently

I am on InDesign Version 21.5.1, and I am still encountering this issue. Industry standard platforms shouldn’t force industry standard professionals to use AI. Stop integrating something we didn’t ask for into our platforms.

leo.r

Community Expert

Just to make sure: did you disable the Generative AI options in preferences? Yes, many users complain about it, and justly so. But to address your particular issue, we need to make sure first that the options are indeed disabled.

R

robertod68086048

Known Participant

Same issue here. Plus, when it happens, InDesign will only close by shutting it down via the TaskManager (Windows 11).

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @robertod68086048,

Sorry to hear you're experiencing the same issue.

As a workaround, please try disabling both Generative AI options under Edit > Preferences > Generative AI, then restart InDesign and check if the issue improves.

Please note that this issue is already being tracked, and the product team is actively working on a fix.

Thank you for your patience, and please let us know whether the workaround helps on your system.

Abhishek

graphics_4075

Inspiring

A feature that is on by default for every user AND that also causes major freezing issues is absurd, as is the fact that it is unsolved after 2 months (let alone all the other issues GenAI in InDesign has caused.)

Wouldn’t it be logical to make these OFF by default like so many users have been requesting? This would avoid possibly degrading the performance of your program for up to 100% of your users… All for a feature that was destructively broken on release.

What an absolute disaster of a feature implementation and a poor example of Adobe’s priorities.

Cheers

K

kaitlin_9423

Participant

Just started having the same issue today.

leo.r

Community Expert

Just started having the same issue today.

Did you disable Generative AI options in preferences?

M

michelle.pendergrass2712036

Participant

Just adding that I have the same issue, at this point, I’m just using illustrator instead.

janej15867342

Participant

We consider InDesign unusable at this point and have rolled back to 21.2 to get back into production. We just upgraded two 6-year-old workstations, where we did not have a problem, both the new systems exhibit the problem. Both have identical hardware and almost identical software configurations. This is a summary I used AI to make concise:

Regression: InDesign 21.4 intermittent spinning cursor on Windows 11 after hardware upgrade

Stable on 21.2
Reproducible on 21.4
Two identical workstations
Intel i7-14700F
RTX 5060 Ti
Windows 11
Commercial print workflow
Linked PDFs
Files on Synology NAS
Clean reinstall performed
Generative AI disabled (no improvement)
Rolling back to 21.2 completely resolves issue

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @janej15867342,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry to hear you're experiencing this issue. If disabling the Generative AI options didn't help, it's possible you're running into a different issue than the one being discussed in this thread.

To isolate it further, could you please try copying one of the affected INDD files and its linked PDFs to a local SSD (outside the Synology NAS) and check whether the freeze still occurs? This will help determine whether the issue is related to the NAS or network I/O. Also, please open Window > Utilities > Background Tasks and check whether any task remains stuck when the spinning cursor appears.

It would also be helpful to test with a new blank document, a locally stored PDF, and both a small and a large PDF to see whether the issue depends on the linked asset.

If the issue persists even with local files, please share the affected INDD (preferably packaged: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/preflighting-files-handoff.html#package_files), one of the affected linked PDFs, and a short screen recording showing the freeze. If the files are confidential, feel free to send them via DM using Google Drive, Dropbox, or another cloud-sharing service.

Looking forward to your update.

Abhishek

janej15867342

Participant

Thanks for the response.

I did the test on my PC and older model that also shows the problem, I took a small project and moved it to my SSD (including any links) and the problem went away. If I did not move the links off the network, the problems persisted.

Our production environment is that we share all files via a Synology NAS. So it does seem to be related to network file access. This still appears to be a regression issue as reverting to 21.2 does resolve the problem and this configuration has been working well for us for years.

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