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Inélsòre
Inspiring
April 23, 2026
Answered

InDesign 21.3 hangs upon opening first document in session

  • April 23, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 24 views

I have recently reinstalled InDesign and, upon every launch, if I go to the Id icon to set some global settings or open the first document of the session, InDesign will hang (spinning beachball, marked as “not responding” in Activity Monitor). 

After about one minute, the hang is over (pun intended) and InDesign resumes perfect functionality (no slowness, no issues). It is as if it wanted to be by itself for a while. If I open a second (or 3rd, 4th, etc.) document no hanging happens. If I close all docs and open a single new one, no hang. It is just the first doc of the session.

I have been able to capture a Spindump while it was hanging. 

Perhaps this can help engineers (or other knowledgeable souls here) find what is going on?

Thank you very much!

I am on macOS Tahoe 26.4 on an Apple Silicon Mac.

I’m posting this here as well because there was no bug report community for InDesign available.

 

Correct answer Abhishek Rao

Hi ​@Inélsòre, 

 

Thanks for reporting this, and I’m sorry to hear you’re running into this behavior at launch.

Could you please try resetting the InDesign preferences and cache to see if that helps? First, quit InDesign. Then go to Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/ and move the “Version [version number]” folder to your desktop. After that, go to Users/[your user name]/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/ and move the corresponding “Version [version number]” folder to the desktop as well. Once done, relaunch InDesign and test opening the first document again.

If the issue still persists, please try launching InDesign with your internet turned off and check if the behavior changes. Also, sign out of the Creative Cloud desktop app, sign back in, and test again.

Additionally, it would help to check if this is influenced by the system environment. Please try testing in macOS Safe Mode and also in a new user account to see if the same delay occurs there. You can refer to these guides for steps:
https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac
https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh15191/mac

Lastly, please try clearing the Creative Cloud sync cache. Quit all Adobe apps, then delete the folders located at ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CoreSync and ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CCX. After that, relaunch Creative Cloud, sign in again, and test the behavior.

 

Please let me know how it goes after trying these steps, and I’ll be happy to take this further with the team.

Abhishek

2 replies

Abhishek Rao
Community Manager
Abhishek RaoCommunity ManagerCorrect answer
Community Manager
April 23, 2026

Hi ​@Inélsòre, 

 

Thanks for reporting this, and I’m sorry to hear you’re running into this behavior at launch.

Could you please try resetting the InDesign preferences and cache to see if that helps? First, quit InDesign. Then go to Users/[your user name]/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/ and move the “Version [version number]” folder to your desktop. After that, go to Users/[your user name]/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/ and move the corresponding “Version [version number]” folder to the desktop as well. Once done, relaunch InDesign and test opening the first document again.

If the issue still persists, please try launching InDesign with your internet turned off and check if the behavior changes. Also, sign out of the Creative Cloud desktop app, sign back in, and test again.

Additionally, it would help to check if this is influenced by the system environment. Please try testing in macOS Safe Mode and also in a new user account to see if the same delay occurs there. You can refer to these guides for steps:
https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac
https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh15191/mac

Lastly, please try clearing the Creative Cloud sync cache. Quit all Adobe apps, then delete the folders located at ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CoreSync and ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CCX. After that, relaunch Creative Cloud, sign in again, and test the behavior.

 

Please let me know how it goes after trying these steps, and I’ll be happy to take this further with the team.

Abhishek

I
InélsòreAuthor
Inspiring
April 25, 2026

Dear Abishek,

thank you for the thorough guidance.

For now, a macOS logout followed by a cleaning of some preferences tied to another app that was bothering me and a macOS restart seem to have calmed things down. 

I will mark your answer as solution and will get back here if I experience this again.

Thank you once again.

All the best,

I.

leo.r
Community Expert
leo.rCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 23, 2026

I wonder if you have any third-party plug-ins or scripts (especially startup scripts) installed?

I
InélsòreAuthor
Inspiring
April 23, 2026

Not at all. Vanilla InDesign with a few (very few) scripts for importing/exporting files.

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