InDesign 2025 Lagging on MacBook Air with M3 Chip

[krzysiekt44191413]

Something terrible happened after InDesign upgrade to 2025 version, MacOS's spinning beach ball spins every time the cursor moves, and InDesign is lagging soooo badly (I work on MBA 15” M3, RAM 24GB, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1). Have you experienced something like this? Is there any solution for this?

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[Laubender]

Hi @wotUwant ,

sorry, but I could not find your bug report.

Hm, maybe it was merged with other similar bug reports to this one here:

[ID-4257184]InDesign 2025(v20.0) Performance issues: Delay or beach balls on basic operations
Yvonne Hubner, October 16, 2024
https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/48970211--id-4257184-in...

BTW: Did you already had the chance to update InDesign 2025 to the bug fix version 20.1.0.70 ?

Could be that the bug is fixed now. Also see:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/kb/fixed-issues.html

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[tristangreatrex]

In addition, when I clicked on linked media, the lag returned (only on linked media) until I moved the cursor off the linked image. This was also fixed by

Preferences > GPU Performance

then ensure the box 'GPU Perfomance' is selected (including animated zoom).

[Dannyweston]

I am still dealing with a stuttering InDesign. I have uninstalled and reinstalled InDesign 2025, wiped with Creative Cloud Cleaner, and factory reset my Intel Mac, but nothing has fixed this poor user experience. I only use Adobe fonts and have no other tools or extensions installed.

InDesign, "You suck!" 

[tristangreatrex · Accepted solution]

I found that once I moved my cursor off the area I selected, InDesign responded. So I fixed the problem by Preferences>Interface - deselect 'Highlight Object Under Selection Tool'. It all works fine now. InDesign is no longer slow - Sequoia 15.2 / MacBook Pro M1 Max / 64GB

[georgek37401698]

THANKS. This fixed it for me too. I was getting two main lag issues: clicking on any container would not show handles until I moved the cursor again, and page up/page down key operations did not show the change in page until I clicked the selection tool.

[Growing Markets]

Same problem... It's becoming very problematic!

[HD Schellnack]

Try updating to the very last version, it helped us, 2025 seems to be running a bit more smoothly now. Still a bit wobbly, still the annoying, neverending «hints», still absurd that Type-1-fonts will be switched of, killing thousands of € in font investment, still not sure why they integrate IMAGE AI but not what would actually make sense, e.g.editing and correcting text with ChatGPT/Claude inline, still sometimes crashing w/o any specific reason... but not completely frozen anymore after 10 seconds. PROGRESS! 😉

[Laubender]

@HD Schellnack said: "… what would actually make sense, e.g.editing and correcting text with ChatGPT …"

Hi @HD Schellnack ,

look into Roland Dreger's work as scripter:

OpenAI for Adobe InDesign
https://github.com/RolandDreger/indesign-openai

For further applications of his scripts look into Project Octopus:

https://www.project-octopus.net/en/

Or see into Eugen Pfüger's MATE for InDesign:

MATE for InDesign: Once Upon a Time in the Revolution!
Marc Autret, February 03, 2025 | Extras | en
https://indiscripts.com/post/2025/02/mate-for-indesign-once-upon-a-time-in-the-revolution

MATE
AI Assistant for Creatives
by Eugen Pflüger
Experimental plugins that help you with your daily tasks, creating scripts, and translating texts.
https://www.omata.io/mate
https://www.omata.io/mate/indesign

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[HD Schellnack]

Dear Uwe, many thanks for guiding me to the AI-tinkerers in Stuttgart. MATE sounds very cool. Must check this out (I have mostly given up on plugins for ID, which is strange, as PS is basically 80% a plugin-machine for me :-D).. These functionalities, including an API-login for paid subscriptions to Claude, Mistral oder ChatGPT, would be great as part of ID proper. As nice as AI is stand-alone, the next step is to integrate it into software and workflows, not by using the GPT as an intermediary for writing script, but directly integrated into ID and Illustrator. We can see glimpses of that with some Photoshop-Plugins and Evoto, but it would be nice to see similar stuff done directly in Layout-Software. Anyway, really big thanks for pointing me to this, will test it next week :-D. 

[Laubender]

Hi @HD Schellnack ,

also look into Ariel Walden's InDesign script Translate that is working with DeepL. Currently I'm testing it:

Translate
One-click translation of your InDesign document!

Id-Extra’s Translate add-on for InDesign uses the power of DeepL™ (and/or Google™ Translate) to change your document’s language while retaining the document’s look, layout, and formatting!

December 2022 update: We have switched to DeepL.com as our main machine-translating provider. (However, the old Google Translate add-on is included in the download package as well.)

https://www.id-extras.com/products/translate/

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[wotUwant]

For me, most of the issues seem to be ironed out at last, however I still needed to turn this off in InDesign [Preferences] > [Advanced Type] > Type contectual Controls. This is a shame as I like this control, it is a useful time-saver but not important. I hope this works for you.