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My computer seems to have slowed down noticeably after some OS update. It is a 2017 iMac 8 GBs of RAM and a Fusion hard drive. It takes over a minute to open InDesign and a project. Has anyone else experienced this and is there a cure?
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Can you please confirm you have the latest version of ID installed? There was an update on this.
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I am running InDesign 16.4, which seems to be the latest version,
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There is a probability that you need to reset preferences. Here is how:
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Hi there,
Sorry to hear aout your experience. In addition to the helpful suggestions given by Diane & Mike, please try creating a new user account on you macOS & see if you see a difference in the performance of the app there.
Additionally, you may follow the instructions given on this community post to improve the performance . Hope it helps.
Regards,
Ashutosh
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I did a clean re-install, but of course I had to migrate my data from a backup. I reset InDesign's preferences and have spent a lot of time restoring things to be the way I want them. Performance may have improved somewhat, but it still takes a minute to open the app and a large document. Other apps like Photoshop and Filemaker also open slowly. For now I am just living with it, and I can only guess that it has something to do with cacheing or compressed memory or disk space. I have First Aid on the disk several times. I don't know enough to interpret what Activity Monitor says is going on when I open the app. I appreciate the efforts to help with this.
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InDesign launches in 7 sec on my 2019 iMac and 13 sec on my late 2012 iMac, so over a minute would not be normal. Both are running Mojave.
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8 GB of RAM isn't really enough and how much spare hard disk capacity do you have?
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My internal drive has 250 GBs of free space. It is a 1 TB drive.
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I just timed it again. Opening InDesign without trying to open a document takes over a minute to get past the splash screen to the point where I have the choice of opening a previous document or creating a new one. Even then it gets a spinning beachball a couple of time when I try to scroll down to select a document.
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My 2012 iMac opening in 13sec only has 8GB, so it seems like it might be Big Sur related. Did you try @Ashutosh_Mishra suggestion of creating a new user account? Have you tried a safe boot?
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As Derek pointed out, 8GB of RAM is half the recommended amount. It's a reasonably cheap upgrade.
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The Apple store says a 16GB module is $400 and a 32GB module is $800. That does not include installation, and it's not my idea of "reasonably cheap." I could buy the memory from some other source for less but installing it on a 2107 iMac involves removing the display and I question whether I want anybody other than an Apple technician doing that.
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FWIW, I just built a new machine. 64 GB of RAM cost me less than $300.
That out of the way, you, unfortunately, bought an horribly underpowered machine. 8GB is barely enough for the operating system.
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If you built a Mac for less than $300, I'd sure like to hear how. And I still don't understand why I don't have enough RAM if I have 1.95 GBs of RAM used for Cached Files. I suspect a lot of these cached files could be trashed and just reloaded as required.
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When InDesign opens one of my documents which has 810 photos on 237 pages, Activity Monitor says it is using 1,25 GBs of RAM. It says the Swap Used is 0 bytes and it says Memory Used by everything is 6.02 GBs. Cached Files use 1.95 GB, but I have no idea what files are being cached or how I control the amount of memory being used to cache files rather than run the current app. I don't see why I need more than GBs of ram to work in InDesign.
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If InDesign is taking over a minute to simply launch, the problem isn’t RAM there’s something going on with your system. As I mentioned above I have a much older 2012 iMac with 8GB and InDesign works just fine on it for light work.
Does the delayed launch happen with a safe boot—starting up with the shift key down?
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It may not be InDesign causing it. What else is running on that machine? I'd try creating a new user account and then start InDesign from there.
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Yes, I tried it with a new user running nothing else and it still took over a minute to load InDesign. Most of the time is spent with the splash screen displaying a series of messages about what it is loading.