Indesign 2023 crashing at startup because of Google Font "Plus Jakarta Sans"

[MatSchaudig]

Hey there,

I am getting more and more frustrated.. So in multiple documents I use the Google Font "Plus Jakarta Sans" and my Indesign doesn't even open the UI and crashes during the application loading popup. I already uninstalled all my fonts and figured, that if I uninstall "Plus Jakarta Sans", Indesign opens up and shows the document with replaced standart fonts instead. If I reinstall the font again (tried multiple sources apart from the official Google font website) it sometimes opens correctly, sometimes does the same crash - but even if it opens up, once I close Indesign and try to relaunch it causes to crash again during startup...

Tryed reinstalling multiple times and cleared all caches... The only thing working is uninstalling the font, reinstalling it and hoping that Indesign doesn't crash - do all the work, then repeat the process if I ever need to reopen a file. It's super annoying and does not even work everytime. 

Any ideas (apart from "just use another font") ?

Thank y'all very much!

[Laubender]

Hi @MatSchaudig ,

don't know how exactly you installed the font file.

What version of InDesign? What operating system?

What you can try is to store the font file in a Document fonts folder. Name that folder exactly like this.

Move the Document fonts folder to the one your InDesign document is stored. Then this document alone has access to that particular font file. Maybe you can single out the issue then. A broken font file perhaps. Ask Google…

Other tests you can do: Try to use the font with other Adobe apps like Illustrator and PhotoShop. Would that work? If not, it's rather clear that the font file has an issue.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[MatSchaudig]

Hi Uwe,

I installed the font on Windows 11 and use Indesign CC 2023 (Version 18.5). I dont think, that the font is broken, because I can use it without any problems in Illustrator and Photoshop.

I just tried your suggestions using a Document fonts folder - unfortunately Indesign still crashes when launching...

Any other tips?

I saw, that there seemed to be a simliar error with an older version of Indesign and appearently it should have been patched, but maybe I experience a similar error with my current version? https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-crashing-with-particular-google-fonts/m...

Any other ideas? 

Thanks alot!

[Lukas Engqvist]

Indesign because of its more advanced typography is more sensitive to defects in fonts. I cannot say if that is the case, but Photoshop and Illustrator may still work, so don't exclude that it's still the font that is the issue. If InDesign is working fine without the font installed and crashes when font is installed it does sound like the font is the issue.
Check the version of the font, try and download it again. I see that it is a variable font? Did you download from google or some other place, check if there are different versions of the font. I see it is avalable also from the developer at https://github.com/tokotype/PlusJakartaSans, try the latest version from there. (There is both OFT, TTF and variable I have not tried all or tested which work or do not)

[MatSchaudig]

Hey Lukas,

got it. Hmm - so I just downloaded the lastest font version from github. OTF and variable still leads to crashing, but with TTF it does not always crash. So I basically need couple attemps if it crashes and the 3rd or 4th attempt to open Indesign actually works, but still it seems to not work smoothly. 
Can't wrap my head around why it mostly does not but sometimes does work. But for now at least I am able to somehow open Indesign with couple attempts and work on my documents. I'll see if I can work like that without crashes during work or export - what would be the logical step to get this more stable in the future?
Rather report that to the font developer or to Adobe?
I'm kinda curious what's bugging - is there some type of crash report or error code I can read out of Indesign to get some context to provide?

Thanks so far - I'm glad that I somehow can continue working 🙂