InDesign Grid toggle quirk

[aaron sportack]

This issue occurs when the mouse cursor is hovering above an object so that it displays a highlight outline but the object is not selected. When I hit a shortcut to toggle any grid display (Guides, margins, baseline, etc) they don't show up until I move my cursor so that it is not over anything. Seeing as this is very common situation, this is a persistently annoying, if not app breaking, bug.

Is this a known issue, and if so, are there any workarounds beyond muttering to meself and jostling the mouse across the screen every two minutes?

[Barb Binder]

HI @aaron sportack:

Can you share some more detail with us?

• Did this just start happening?
• What version of InDesign and what operating system?
• How much RAM?
• Is it in one file or all files?

I just tried it (InDesign 18.5.1 and 19.3) on macOS Ventura and not seeing it. If it started after the update to 19, have you rebuilt preferences lately?

~Barb

[aaron sportack · Accepted solution]

Hi Barb. This was on an M3 MacBook Pro with 18GB of Ram running Sonoma 14.3. Most of the time I'm working with a 27" Studio Display. I had been running InDesign 19.2 and just upgraded to 19.3 where the issue appeared unchanged.

Notably, I recall that I had disabled GPU Performance in the prefernces due to some significant screen flickering that was occuring with InDesign 19.1. When I went in and turned that back on the issue with the guides went away (though UI performace felt a bit less responsive). Whatever it is seems relates to that toggel though.

[Barb Binder]

Hi Aaron:

Ok, I'm glad re-enabling GPU Performance is helping with the guide display. It seems like a step in the right direction.

I find myself toggling the setting off & on, depending on whether I'm presenting/recording or working alone. With it on, sometimes I get weird screen lags—but it tends to be text redraw and not the guides. Hopefully the day will come when we can just leave it on all the time and it does exactly what it is supposed to do.

~Barb