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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[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@Ranessa

How many fonts do you have installed / activated? 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-2025-v20-0-crashes-upon-redo/m-p/149299...

[Ranessa]

Not many...I use a font manager so turn them off and on with use.  I only leave on the few I use daily.

[hnks14]

I would advise using the 2024 version. I lost my last minute dealine submission. My source file wiped out random pages on a 200 page file after an export. 

Support was not able to help. 

[MickyWeirNSU]

This has happened to me also. Every mouse click or movement causes InDesign to Beachball... This morning I uninstalled 2025 and went back to 2024, and it fixed the issue.

[paulas40545316]

I have the same problem on a MacBook Pro with the same configuration. As someone who has used Adobe Products since the earliest days of Photoshop, it's beyond frustrating that they can't get it right BEFORE they distribute it. I'll now have to backpedal and UNINSTALL 2025 from multiple devices and go back to using 2024. Maybe they'll have it functioning in six months.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@paulas40545316

Unfortunately, setting auto-update is never a good idea.

[Ranessa]

I can’t even blame it on that. I clicked on update. Dumb me…won’t do that again.

🙂

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

I can’t even blame it on that. I clicked on update. Dumb me…won’t do that again.🙂
By @Ranessa

It's not your fault.

[Ranessa]

I feel the same way. I spent so much extra time undoing everything and took all the new software off and put the old back on. I should have known better than to update right away. I will remember next time. I started with the Adobe Creative Suite at it’s beginning and this is the worst problem I’ve ever had….not very well thought out.

[wotUwant]

I was having exactly the same issues with the new 2025 InDesign, reverted to 2024 and the issues were immediately resolved. With the high monthly cost for Adobe software - their core software needs to work - I wasted loads of time thinking it was my new Mac keyboard that was faulty. 

[Ricardo281378713tcu]

They're only focused on their AI gimmicks so they look even more like Canva. They forget to work on the core software.

[wotUwant]

Yes I totally agree, I really do not have the need for the AI gimmicks either – nice to have, but really not essential to my working day. I need the core software that I rely on to work.

[DragonfliesDesign]

A couple of things that have helped - 

1. Turn off Preflight: Window/Output/Preflight. Unfortunately, they don't give us the option for it to be off by default so you'll have to remember to turn it off every document you open.

2. Turn off Font Previews: On a blank screen go to Preferences/Type/Type Options/  uncheck the box for "Enable in-menu Font Previews" then Restart InDesign to "make it so!"

So far, these have helped. I'm on Macbook M1 Pro with Sequoia 15.0

[Martin Kolba]

Same problem but if I turn Adobe Fonts Off. All is ok. Try it. 

[Vergel37768367r9yl]

Yes inDesign 2025 is a complete disaster for me. Same problem. As someone who uses this for work 95% of the time, this is a horrible failure. I have to go back to 2024. Big problem is I have to deal with newer version of the indd files, and some of it does not convert for some reason. This is a nightmare.

And yeah, nothing solved it, the preflight and font hiding thing is a no no.

[thomas schweiger]

I'm joining in here, I have the same problem with a macbook air 13” M2, 16GB RAM, macOS Seqoia 15.0.1.

InDesign 2025 is hardly usable, even with the simplest documents or editing paragraph and character formats I see a beach ball, everything is slow, sluggish and jerky - an absolute disaster for people who depend on this software and have to earn their money with it ... But of course the costs for CreativeCloud are always collected on time for software that only works partially. Really annoying.

[Laubender]

@thomas schweiger said:

"I'm joining in here, I have the same problem with a macbook air 13” M2, 16GB RAM, macOS Seqoia 15.0.1."

Hi Thomas,

I wonder if the problem is perhaps a lack of memory in combination with the macOS version.

Adobe says minimum requirement is 8 GB RAM (16 GB RAM recommended), but still…

And there is no mention of macOS Seqoia 15 there:

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/system-requirements.html

Currently I'm running InDesign 2025 on macOS 12.7.1 on a MacBook Pro from 2021 with an M1 chip.

I see no lack of performance in comparison to InDesign 2024 on the same machine. But to be honest, currently I do not do any big production work with it. That's too early in the product cycle without any bug fixes.

FWIW: What makes InDesign sluggish could be a VPN conncetion where a local InDesign document is permanently looking for placed images that are stored on network drives accessed through the VPN… ( not to speak of documents you open on the network server through a VPN )

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

[wotUwant]

Jumping in here, the problem is with the app not the Mac - I have a Mac Mini (2024) with Apple M2 Pro chip and 16GB ram, I am running Sequoia 15.0.1. All other apps work fine as does InDesign 2024 v19.5. Working totally locally - but I have a very high speed fibre connection. I rely on InDesign probably about 60% of my working day, I will be using ID 2024 for now and waiting for Adobe to sort this hopefully.

[thomas schweiger]

Hi @Laubender, thanks for your feedback and help. It's not the RAM memory, I checked it live and the memory pressure is OK - there is still a good 10 GB free between the physical loaded memory. What I have noticed, however, is that the CPU load increases significantly high when I move a text frame or edit paragraph and character formats (as you can see in the Screenshot of the Terminal).

My linked graphics files (PNG/JPG/PSD) are also stored locally on my SSD, no VPN connection is set up - it happens in every document, even on new and blank documents.

The previous tips from @DragonfliesDesign seem to have fixed the problem - thanks!: Turn off Preflight and uncheck “Enable in-menu Font Previews” seem to have fixed the problem.

I've re-installed inDesign2024 to finish my project, since i have some straight deadlines. Everything works fine and wonderfully fast in inDesign2024, and there are no high CPU loads. I'll just wait for the next updates for InDesign2025 …

Regards, Thomas

[Ben__P]

Having the horrible lag in Indesign 2025 as well. MacBook Pro M1 Max with 32 gigs of RAM. 2024 ran great, 2025 is incredibly frustrating. I wonder if this did not show up in the beta? If it did, not sure why it would be released as is as it is pretty close to unusable. 

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

Are only Macs affected?

I've installed 2025 yesterday to make a new version of my tool - and on a PC - haven't experienced any problems? And the person who asked for the new version - also haven't reported any problems - on a PC as well? 

[HD Schellnack]

Sounds like that is part of the problem, something with AS SoCs. All the reports seem to be on M1 onward. But than again, on a Mac, AS is what you (mostly) have these days. We have two old iMacPros somewhere, I could check them next week. 

[craig_0866]

It's not just Apple Silicon Macs... I have the same issue on my iMac Pro. High CPU load. However, I use a PC at work an no issues. My guess is that it's a universal macOS bug.

[wotUwant]

Has anyone had an update on this please? It seems to have gone quiet.

[Ranessa]

I just went back to all 2024 software and problem solved. Adobe needs to fix for this kind of MacBook Pro.
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