Participant

Question

InDesign freezes completely when placing/scaling images

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
October 6, 2026
9 replies
28 views

Hi everyone,

I’m having a recurring issue with InDesign and I’m wondering if anyone has experienced the same problem.

Whenever I place an image in an InDesign document and then try to scale or fit the image to the frame, InDesign sometimes completely freezes.

For example, I right-click on the image and choose an option such as fitting or scaling the image to the frame. At that point, the right-click menu stays open on screen, my mouse cursor changes to the loading circle, and InDesign stops responding.

The strange part is that the freeze seems to affect more than just InDesign. I can no longer type, close InDesign, or properly switch to other applications, including non-Adobe applications.

Even Task Manager becomes difficult to open. I can only access it by pressing the Windows key and navigating from there. Once InDesign freezes, I can no longer simply type in the Windows search bar either.

This is happening even in a completely new InDesign document and with very small image files, so it does not seem to be related to the document size or image file size.

Has anyone experienced this kind of system-wide freeze when placing or fitting images in InDesign? If so, did you find a fix or workaround?

Abhishek Rao

Community Manager

Hi @Sonja226047157fyt,

Thanks for the update and sorry to hear that you experience this issue. If disabling the Generative AI options in Preferences, as suggested by @leo.r, stops the freezing behavior, please be informed that this matches a known issue that has already been logged as a bug, and the team is actively working on a fix.

For now, please keep those options disabled as a workaround and continue working normally to see if the issue returns.

You can also refer to this similar report for additional details and updates:

https://community.adobe.com/questions-671/indesign-semi-freezes-with-background-task-spinning-when-placing-or-replacing-images-1559909

Please let us know whether the issue remains resolved with the Generative AI options disabled. We'll keep the Community updated as we have more information from the team.

Thanks,
Abhishek

leo.r

Community Expert

Disable Generative AI options in Preferences.

S

Sonja226047157fytAuthor

Participant

I expect you mean these options?

The language is Dutch, but this is the Preferences menu.

leo.r

Community Expert

Yes, these are the options. The problems similar to the one you described are often caused by these new options. Will it make a difference in your case?

Bill Silbert

Community Expert

The fact that this problem affects your system as well as the program seems to suggest incompatibility between the versions of InDesign and your operating system. Could you please provide the exact versions of InDesign and Windows that you are using? If both the program and the OS are not up to date then it might be a good idea to update them and see if the problem persists.

S

Sonja226047157fytAuthor

Participant

Hi Bill,

Windows 11 Version 25H2

Indesign 21.6 x64

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @Sonja226047157fyt,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Would you mind trying the suggestions shared in this help article (https://adobe.ly/4ANxEPf) and checking if they help? Additionally, try isolating the problem by running InDesign under a different administrator account (Windows) and after rebooting your computer in Safe Mode (Windows), and share your observations.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Anubhav

S

Sonja226047157fytAuthor

Participant

Hi Anubhav M,

This doesn’t seem to be the solution either.

I disabled the Generative AI options in the Preferences, but aside from that, I also can’t predict when the freeze will or won’t happen. It seems completely random.

Sometimes everything works perfectly, sometimes InDesign freezes immediately when I place an image, and sometimes it only freezes a few seconds later.

I can’t seem to find any clear pattern or reason behind it.

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