InDesign running slow. Spinning ball constantly appearing.

[scottmosher]

Ok, I'm having CONSTANT slow drag with InDesign. The spinning beach ball appears while I"m doing almost ANYTHING, even after quitting/re-starting the program, and even re-starting the OS. I'm running High Sierra on Mac, with 40GB of memory, so that shouldn't be the issue, but almost anything I'm doing, I'm getting major lag. Any ideas? This is really ridiculous. Thanks!

[rpr]

I imagine you mean Mbps. 400 Mbps download should be plenty fast and above average. Also are you saying your upload speed is also 400 Mbps?!

Are you using Google Fiber ?

that kind of upload speed simply just isnt available in majoroty of places and should be totally unneccassry for a program like indeisgn to run smoothly.

If you are on Spectrums 400 plan the 400 is the download but the upload maxes at 20 which is still higher upload than typical.

The highest upload speed avaialble to most is a gigabyte plan which all typically seem to have an upload speed of 35.

I personaly at home ( where I do most of my work) use COX's 500 unlimited plan. This is the only provider choice I have in my area and this is the 4th tier in their 5 package offerings – 500 Mbps Download and 10 Mbps upload plan and I am hardlined into the modem on my main computer.  

when i upgrading my speed in the first place it's percieved gains in these programs was only temporary so i'd be prepared for it to come back once that cache builds up again.

I could add another $30 to this overpriced $150/ month bill for the next tier Gigablast, but that should be totally unneccessary to run majoroty of adobes software. If I can win games in fortnite with it and stream 4k, Adobe cloud should not be an issue.

Indesign has had 0 useful updates and abilities stripped since it has been moved into the cloud subscription scheme.  It's performance to place some images stored locally simply should not be such an ongoing issue or require the fastest internet known to man in order not to crash or freeze up constantly.

[todb92481561]

I was having this problem also. Turned off automatic backups on Time Machine and it fixed the problem ... at least for now. Thanks to this community for all the problem solving that Adobe seems incapable of doing. After using Adobe software for over 25 years, I now feel like their prisoner.

[maks27]

Try this...

Indesign > Preferences > Interface > Options > Live Screen Drawing...change to "Immediate"

[wlym]

I really hope this works! I've tried EVERYTHING including uninstalling ID and trashing the preferences and caches but I still get constant beachballing on a top spec'd 2017 iMac with 40GB RAM. This has only been happening since the 2022 "upgrade". Small price to pay to get rid of "Master" Pages I guess. The price-gouging subscription model has really incentivized the wrong priorities…

[rob-25437735]

As the creator of this thread, The solution to this nonsense is to go back to Quark Xpress. I've never stopped using it and it's only ever gotten better once they figured out the odd bugs, and since Quark 2018 it has run smoothly and is faster than ID. 

i have to work in InDesign for a company I do contract work for, but for my personal freelance I used Quark exclusively and NEVER have any issues.

Adobe bought Aldus Pagemaker in 1996, improved the UI and released it as InDesign but has NEVER done anything to address some of its major bugs since its initial release!

[PACMAN7]

I can't vouch for Pagemaker turning into InDesign because I never used it back in the day—Just Freehand (which they bought and killed off), Quark & Photoshop for the regular stuff. But it would be a daunting process for me going back to Quark after so many years away, especially with thousands of shared files regularly being done in InDesign. I like your thinking, but it would be virtually impossible to change and encourage everyone else in the teams I share with to take that step back too. Don't get me wrong, I miss the shortcuts in Quark, but Adobe have got me by the 'short and curly's' for the time being (with all current clients that is). The only thing I can do is mitigate the spinning wheels etc by making sure I'm up-to-date with the hardware.

[jeffhalmos]

The issue and others have been solved. Used it all day today pushing the hell out of it and it was fine and even faster than it has been in a year or more. So the QuarkXPress thing seems late to the party.

[PACMAN7]

Not for me Jeff. Been in touch with Adobe ever since buying this 2020 iMac on the day it launched and still no resolution. I'll hopefully rule out hardware when the Mac Studio is compatible.

[chuckm1903077]

Just to ask a stupid question, did you do both:
Go into Suitcase prefs and unclick 'Document Tracking'.

In InDesign did you go into Type/Suitcase Fusion and unclick 'Activate for embedded objects'

The latter fixed mine.

Also, I bought a 2019 Mac Pro in April and InDesign was running super laggy on that. It turns out it was the settings on my monitor. (Dell 32 4K) I realize the iMac is it's own deal, but once I messed with the resolution on the monitor, the lagginess went away and it was smooth as butter. Might be worth a try.

[jeffhalmos]

Every once in awhile Apple flips my Samesung 4K 32" monitor to 30 Hertz which would cause jerking and slowdowns like crazy. But it would slow down the entire computer not just Id.

[rob-25437735]

That's not your machine doing that but the monitor itself. I have a Samsung TV in my bedroom and it also does that and my wife's cousin has a monitor on her work computer which is a Dell running the latest windows and hers does it as well. It's definitely a Samsung thing.

Samsung screens have suck terribly since they started making them. They have the most non-uniform lighting of any brand and the first thing you should do to test a screens color and lighting continuity is to open up a graphics app and fill the screen with a solid color, blue or plum should serve well, and just look at how the color varies all over the place. They should NEVER be utilized in the professional environment.

[chuckm1903077]

Quark was always super clunky to me, and in 1998, their user base felt more like a religious cult than anything else. I followed my FreeHand cult into the ground, but finally assimilated to the Borg. It's not bad, and they have cookies.

[jeffhalmos]

I dropped XPress when I found out you could import Illustrator and Photoshop files natively instead of having to convert them to EPSs. But MAN Id was lacking for key commands. As far as i know we STILL can't increase type to a specific size with a key command.

[chuckm1903077]

Oh, geez. I forgot about the eps thing. Everybody would save as eps's. It drove me nuts. For me, InDesign was the choice since I could option-click on a psd and pop it open. 99% of the time ID works just fine despite it's bells and whistles. In this thread, it was due to plugins from Extensis.

[rob-25437735]

FYI, you can do all of that and way more in QXP, and have been able to for well over a decade. And quark can edit color using curves, levels and other mothods as if you were in photoshop.

You'd be well served to DL a trial and give it a whirl. It's free and you have nothing to lose.

As for shottcuts, ID is STILL in the stone ages!!! Leading and kerning are time killers extraordinaire!

And work on any lengthy book and you'll know all too well the literal PAIN it causes for how it will re-wrap dozens, even hundreds of pages of text you've already formatted to perfection and will force you to break the text into a separate string of linked boxes separate from the original set. It really is baffling how this POS became the industry standard, but I'll explain that tomorrow for anyone who's interested.

[tim824]

THAT IS NOT THE CORRECT ANSWER - I do not have or use Extensis Suitcase.  And yes I get that freaking spinning beach ball ALL THE TIME, when working on InDesign Documents that have lots of TABLES (the more, the slower).  For instance, I am currently working on 2 large InDesign Documents, 1 is a 250+ product catalog with a few tables, lots of text frames and linked images (I have been a user for 25+ years), it's large yes, some slowness does occur (not much), but then I have another large Manual with about 175 pages that use TABLES (and a lot of them, at least 1 per page, sometimes 2-3) - which makes my InDesign document STUPID SLOW, everytime I select (click) on any table in the document, and I mean any, that freaking spinning beach ball just freezes EVERYTHING for a few seconds, SLOWS my process down considerably, like painfully slow and I want to stick my fist through my iMac.  I'm not getting into what type of iMac, how much Memory (RAM), plenty of disc space, everything up-to-date, can't tell you how many times I've trashed prefs, and did everything everyone has mentioned, NOTHING WORKS except removing or NOT USING tables.  And those of use who did use Quark (man they dropped the ball when InDesign came on-board) such a good program, terrible managment of their application, going back now isn't even an option, I mean switching the first time from Quark to InDesign was painful, I'm not going through that again and Adobe knows it. Kinda stuck, and that really burns me.  Get on board Adobe InDesign and fix your application that I HAVE TO PAY A MONTHLY RENTAL FEE to use and it doesn't work. Seriously I would have switched long ago if it wasn't such a big pain-in-the-ass task. Just freaking burns me!!

[chuckm1903077]

Got it. I've only experienced that on smaller docs, but the tables do seem to be the culprit. However, it seems to be document dependent lagginess. Something is wrong with the individual doc. If I copy the info into a new document, everything seems to solve itself. I realize that isn't an option for a 100+ page doc, but have you exported it to an IDML and then opened that up? 

[Bill Waltz]

I don't use suitcase either (anymore0, having switched to Right Font. I had the same issue with the beach ball. Just turned off auto activation for the fonts and the beach ball problem completely disappeared. 

[wd52]

I am beginning to suspect iCloud file upload/download is causing the delays to accessing files, especially after the first change to a file.

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi @wd52,

Sorry to hear about the trouble. You can make those files available offline and see if that makes a difference. You can also try the suggestions shared here if InDesign is running slow with files saved locally. Feel free to update the discussion if you need further assistance.

Thanks

Rishabh

[wd52]

Making the files OFFLINE does not help. I suspect that when you open a file, Photoshop marks a new MODIFY date or similar, which causes an iCloud mirroring of the "new" file. This whole thing started perhaps 6-8 months ago ONLY after I updated Photoshop; see my posting history.

Nothing I have tried has helpled. Keeping a picture file totally off iCloud has not helped. I suspect some cache file, or temp file that ADOBE is creating or updating is triggering an iCloud update, causing everything to lock up for 20-40 seconds.

VERY FRUSTRATING for thousands of users of Adobe products, not just Photoshop. 

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi @wd52,

Sorry for the delay in response. If this is happening with Photoshop, please try posting here. 

Thanks

Rishabh

[wd52]

I have posted there, Thank you. No one has a solution after many years now. I think Adobe is making changes to work files internally, which then triggers iCloud to upload them to be current in the cloud. You need to find a way to NOT block all use of Photoshop while this happens. Put it on a queue to be done later.