InDesign Extremely Slow on MacBook M3 Pro After macOS Tahoe Update (Lagging and Freezing Issue)

​@Gabriela Gancheva have you tried deleting your preferences from your MAC? I know when I had a defective battery and it was replaced, my MacBook was acting weird; the staff at Apple had said to me to purge the contents in the preferences folder. I was skeptically, but I copy the contents from the ‘preferences folder’ into another folder on my MAC; then I hit Command A inside the preferences folder, and hit Command Delete which took the files to the trash. And then I hit ‘Empty’ — Again I was sceptical. I restarted my MAC because restarting the computer, means it will create new preferences in the preferences folder. I look at the original preferences folder and it was 117GB! And after relaunching my Adobe apps, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop and Acrobat, my preferences folder is a shocking 384kb!  Everything works great! And yes, I went back and deleted that copied folder too! 

go to HD - Library - Preferences - Double click it, and if you want copy that into a another folder. Go back to your preferences folder and select all and delete. Most important step is to empty that trash and restart your MAC

In addition, if all other advice doesn’t help, I recommend installing Sequoia on another volume (as well as everything else you need to install) and working from there until Tahoe’s issues are ironed out. (Even though your problem is not common, I work on Tahoe with no issues, as well as many other users.)

Hi Gabriela,

macOS and full-disk access

You likely want to put InDesign into the full-disk access privileged part of your computer, especially if it seems to be laggy or parts of the interface are exhibiting problems:

Apple menu > System Settings
Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access
Click the slider switch to turn on and show as blue in color. If your application is not listed, click the plus sign at the bottom to browse to and add your Adobe application.

More troubleshooting ideas

Hi ​@Gabriela Gancheva, 

I’m sorry to hear how disruptive this has been. To help narrow this down, could you please confirm the exact version of macOS Tahoe you’re currently on, for example 26.3 or another build? Also, kindly try starting your Mac in Safe Mode to check if this is related to any third-party extensions or background processes: https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh21245/mac

Additionally, please try testing InDesign from a new local administrator user account to see if the issue is user-profile specific: https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh15191/mac

If the problem still persists after this, please share a short screen recording showing the lag or freezing in action so I can review it and escalate this with the team.

Looking forward to your update, and I’ll do my best to help you get this resolved.

Abhishek