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Participant
March 13, 2025
Answered

Indesign 20.2 crashing error: Adobe InDesign is shutting down. A serious error was detected

  • March 13, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 5335 views

Help! 

My 2025 indesign version 20.2 is crashing constantly - i keep getting this message and it's dangerous with working files as it's already corrupt one:

"Adobe InDesign is shutting down. A serious error was detected. Please restart InDesign to recover work in any unsaved InDesign documents."

Using M4 Mac Mini
I'm saving to a hard drive or mac and not cloud
I've deleted preferences in the library, resetpreferences in the app plus also unstalled indesign and redownloaded it. 

All no effect 😞

Any ideas?


 

 

<Title renamed by MOD>

Correct answer Mac One

Typeface replied to me and said:

"InDesign v20.2 indeed seems to have trouble with auto activation. The Adobe InDesign team is aware and has been investigating the issue. According to Adobe the latest InDesign prerelease version v20.3 should fix the crashes. More info is available here: https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180/suggestions/49555079

 
If you don't want to wait for v20.3 you can temporarily revert to InDesign v20.1 which should still work correctly:
 
So I'm taking that nas this only become an issue when Adoce updated InDesign and the next update of InDesign will fix it; this is not a Typeface issue. Typeface have the WORKAROUND, Adobe have the ISSUE and FIX. Beware of where fingers are pointed. Sometimes it's an issue that needs to be investigated carefully with workarounds that may not be the root cause.

4 replies

TögemannWerke
Participating Frequently
April 26, 2025

Got InDesign 20.3 and Mac OS 15.4.1 today. All runs fine with Typeface. No crashes. Thx for fixing

Participant
March 14, 2025

SOLVED!

I can happily say that Typeface is the problem, I turned off auto activation and it hasn't crashed once! Thanks again to this forum for discovering this 


TögemannWerke
Participating Frequently
March 20, 2025

Same here, InDesign 20.2 crashing in one Line, same as InCopy and yes, I m using Typeface as well. For now i go back to InDesign 20.1, that runs fine with Typeface.

I hope there will be an update to fix this soon, from Typeface or Adobe. Disable Typeface make no sense for me and my workaround.

MacBookPro 16 M3 max, MacOS 15.3.2 (but 15.3.2 wasn´t better in this case)

Participant
March 13, 2025

I'm on OS 15.3.2

I just read about the Typeface issue (which i'm using) so i've just disabled auto activation to see if that makes a difference, so far so good but will report  back later today after going through a few files

 

Abhishek Rao
Community Manager
Community Manager
March 13, 2025

Hi @adamg52283676,  

 

Thanks for reaching out, and thanks to our experts for guiding you on the Typeface issue. Since it’s a known cause of crashes when closing files, hopefully, this fix works for you. Looking forward to your update. Let me know if the crash still occurs.  

 

^

Abhishek

Mac One
Participant
April 17, 2025

This is a 'workaround' not a 'fix'. As this has started happening with the 20.2 update I'd like to know if Adobe are addressing it or pushing it to another company (Typeface) to find a solution. Or is everyone ignoring it hoping that the users will give up? 

 

Please let us know so we can 'fix' it rather than 'workaround' it.

Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
March 13, 2025

What OS version?

 

Do you use Typeface app? People report problems and disabling it fixes the problem.

 

There is 20.3 update.

 

Community Expert
March 13, 2025

@Robert at ID-Tasker said: "here is 20.3 update."

 

Hi Robert,

don't think so. The latest what I can see in the Creative Cloud Desktop App is InDesign version 20.2.


FWIW: Currently I also have a problem with constantly crashing with that version. Every time I click the View menu InDesign 2025 is crashing; without any error message. Resetting cache and preferences did not help for now, because when I remove the folders for cache and preferences with every restart of InDesign 2025 is not starting up with fresh preferences , but copies the preferences from my InDesign 2024.

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
March 13, 2025

@Laubender 

 

You're right - I've confused it with 19.5.3 update. Sorry.