Lag/Delay in new indesign update (2025)

[Ashley25725767rspr]

After installing Indesign 2025 (20.0 & 20.1), there is now a 3-5 sec lag/delay every time I click my mouse in and out of the program. This is becoming incredibly frustrating. I've uninstalled/re-installed the app multiple times and reset preferences on quit, and nothing is changing. I also went and "rebuilt my cache" of the Adobe indesign folders on my computer, and that did seem to solve the issue for a day, but I got back to having the delay again.  I have had Adobe Indesign for 10 years and have never run into this issue until the 20.0 update. This is making the app unworkable. Please help ASAP. I cannot spend any more time trying to figure this out. 

[Bertd]

Hey Abhiske,

Thanks for you reply!
I always try my equipment up-to-date so my Synlology NAS as well. I understand work locally is always a bit faster. But working for a magazine more than one person need to access the folders (except INDD files) and therefore I am always work from my NAS. Run the test on 20.0.1 and there is no difference in local of NAS files. However on 20.1 local files seem to have the delay as well so the same as working from my NAS.

Hope this helps!
Remaing working under 20.0.1 for a while but this issue is solved since a delay is not preferable in a production situation.

Regards, Bert

[Abhishek Rao]

@bertd,

Thanks for the detailed update! I'll make sure to share this with the product team so they’re aware. If you face any other issue, feel free to drop here. 

Best,  
Abhishek  

[Ham1000]

As with others here, rolling back to 20.0.1 seems to have worked for me; the infuriating lag doesn't seem to be present in this version. 🙂

[Juan Cano]

Will be doing this; been experiencing this lag for weeks and I thought it was my OneDrive I use!

[Juan Cano]

Wait nevermind.... I am currently on 20.0.1 and experiencing the lag issues. 

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @Juan Cano,

Would you mind updating to the latest version, InDesign 20.1, and see if that helps? 

Also, could you describe when exactly the lag occurs? (e.g., switching between apps, selecting objects, scrolling, etc.) If possible, please share a screen recording of the issue, so we can better understand the problem. Moreover, please confirm if you tried the steps pinned in this thread. 

Looking forward to your update!

^
Abhishek

[wlym]

InDesign 20.1 still lags horribly on a brand new M4 MacBook Pro. It was a fresh install on a new machine so we can't blame preferences or caches, etc. I'm not using Magnet. InDesign 19.5.1 opens the same files with no lag.

Super inconvenient having to resave every 2025 file as IDML. 

Why is Adobe silent on this issue?

[Bertd]

Hi wlym, same here but InDesign 20.0.1 works fine as well and you don't have the issue with the IDML files.

[Abhishek Rao]

Hi @wlym & @bertd,

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'd like to gather more details to better understand and escalate this issue.

Could you please provide:

 - The exact macOS version you’re running.

 - The specs of your machine (RAM, etc.).

 - A description of where the lag occurs (e.g., selecting objects, scrolling, exporting, etc.).

 - A screen recording demonstrating the lag.

As per the product team, the beachball issue in basic operations is being looked into for the 20.1 release. I’d like to isolate this further so I can guide them to focus on specific areas.

Looking forward to your response!

^

Abhishek

[Bertd]

Hi Abbishek,

Ofcourse I'm glad to share the info.  As written I moved over from Sonama to Sequoia 15.3.1. last week and comparing it if have noticed no differences on InDesign. Altough the delay in selecting an object (or textframe) in 20.1 is still revelant that's why I switched back to 20.0.1.

The sytem is:

• MacStudio M1 Max
• 64 GB internal
• 4 TB SSD

I have no screen recording available since then I have to install 20.1 again but it is mainly in selecting any object since scrolling is not an issue.

Hope this helps!
Regards, Bert

[John24472726qybf]

I have the same issues (InDesign 20.1). Typing a single character will take 1-3 seconds to show up. Clicking Command-T to get the type character palete to open takes 3-4 seconds. The arrow keys to move an object will take up to 10 full seconds to register one click. Everything in the program lags to the point of not really functioning. Then, sometimes, the screen flashes white for a split second and then goes back to normal. The lag time seems to get worse the longer you are in InDesign until it finally stops responding. And all of this is happening while working 100% local, and not off of a server or any connection. The fix — I uninstalled InDesign 2025, went into the Library and deleted all InDesign files in the preferences, cache, and application support folders, and then did a fresh install of InDesign 2024 and the problems are now gone. InDesign 2025 should not have been released to the public yet. It still seems it's a very unstable beta version. 

[rudo_9535]

I was updating hoping to end the lag behaviour, seems it only got worse. Soooo done with this, pffff.... Think Adobe forgot to test before release.

[John24472726qybf]

I wish Adobe would take a year off from producing new bells and whistles and just focus on bugs and performance issues. I still have to run 2024 products (InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop). And they are still releasing bug-fix and performance updates on the 2024 versions. Maybe I'll try updating to 2025 again when 2026 rolls around. 

[Eugene Tyson]

@rudo_9535  @John24472726qybf 
I'm not an Adobe employee - I'm a forum user like you too, and I am a community expert, that just means I participate in the forums a lot and got invited to their program to help out on the forums as much as I can. 

From my point of view.

I get the frustration, performance issues are infuriating, especially when you update hoping for improvement and it goes the opposite way. But just to add some perspective…

It's not that Adobe forgets to test, far from it. They test rigorously, and you can even be part of that through the public Beta programme. But no matter how thorough the internal testing is, they can't possibly cover every permutation of system setup, OS version, external plugins, VPNs, fonts, firewalls, colour profiles, dodgy fonts, outdated drivers, third-party extensions, or… whatever cocktail of software is running in the background on any given user’s machine.

That said, I get the appeal of saying “take a year off and fix bugs”. But it’s not an either-or situation. Bug fixing happens continuously, and has its own dedicated pipeline. It’s not like they have to stop developing features to fix bugs, different teams handle different things. Plus, features aren’t just dreamed up overnight, they’re usually in the works for years, go through internal review cycles, and are often based on roadmaps and user feedback. (Even if some features do leave you wondering who asked for them.)

Also, every bug fix can introduce new bugs, even unintentionally. That’s the nature of complex codebases. It’s like whack-a-mole at times, squash one and another pops up.

Still, I totally agree stability should never take a back seat to shiny new toys. That balance doesn’t always feel right but it is being worked on, whether we see it or not. It just doesn’t always show up in the way we’d like, or when we’d like it.

Posting on the forums is extremely valuable - but also take note that you can report bugs here

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs

[rudo_9535]

Thanks for your response, I surely understand the issues that come with creating software, especially this huge, and ofcourse I know it is tested thoroughly, but it  just doesn't feel that way, I get so much bugs. Former versions where more stable in my opinion.

It's more that I am frustrated about the choices Adobe is making. For example the zoom behaviour in Indesign, Illustrator and Photoshop, for me it's not intuitive anymore, zoom to selection? Centered zoom? Just zoom in and out without changing the screen position, like it used to be. Looking at a page in Indesign, wanting to zoom out a little and woh it jumps to a totally other page because there was still a thing selected, who wants that? Sure you can deactivate those features, but after every update they are turned on again. Masked items in Illustrator pasted in Photoshop doesn't just paste the masked boundaries, like it used to before, no, it pastes the complete size of the artwork that is masked including the non visible elements, totally not workable for me and terrible for precise work. It slows me down more and more. All the handles on the boundary boxes, I don't need a rotate handle, just press r and rotate. Not to mention Acrobat where most of the tools are hidden nowadays, why?

All those things are simply not working for me. And now this buggy update for Illustrator and Indesign, its too much. And, no, I don't have a fancy system with all kinds of plugins, just plain macosx, loads of internal memory, often restarted and everything is up to date, working local and not from a server.

And then i see all those new features like AI, sorry i just don't need that in Indesign or Illustrator, not yet.
On the other hand, I must say, AI features in Photoshop are great! These are real timesavers. But then... Photoshop and zooming behaviour, this is broken for me, sorry.

[Eugene Tyson]

As i say posting here is great.

But you need to use the bug reporting form I linked to earlier. You can also request feature requests.

Maybe there's better ways to do the work you're doing, copying and pasting from app to app has never been a great experience for me so I avoid it almost completely.

[Lauren28566750fswi]

Hi all, 
I noticed this happening when I recently updated.  I had tried removing the preferences like OP did and this didn't work. 
What did work for me was going into the File Handling menu and changing the "Number of Recent Items to Display" from 20 to 0.  
I'm working in a corporate environment and so most of our files are on a cloud server, and it seems that even though this wasn't an issue in the earlier versions of InDesign for me, it's become a little quirk with the latest version.  I'll post an update if anything changes for me, but thought it worth sharing incase this helps others 🙂 

[John24472726qybf]

I was working 100% locally with the InDesign file and all linked image files on my hard drive and was having horrible lag problems. The only thing that fixed it for me was going back to InDesign 2024. 

[Lauren28566750fswi]

Ah, I'm sorry to hear!  Did you try the above steps anyway?  I found out another cause of it can be that one of the thumbnails for the recent files can be corrupted even if it's a local file, which causes that same lag issue. 

I hope you can find a solution soon or that Adobe is able to fix this so that you can use the latest version though! 

[Lauren28566750fswi]

Hi John, another user reported that the latest version that was recently released should fix this now (20.2), thought I would reply to you so you can give it a try.  If not, I'd still recommend giving the above steps a try (reducing the Number of Recent Items to display from 20 to 0) as it might work for you too.  The lag hasn't returned for me since so hopefully it'll be fine going forward. Best of luck1 

[rhinestonelife]

@Lauren28566750fswi  Thank you, this worked for me.! YAY! My set-up exceeds the recommended specs, like excessively so. For a minute, rolling back to an old version worked. I have tried every manner of reinstall, reboot, reset, uncheck, check, turn on and turn off that is in all the forums. And then I found this post and this worked ("this one weird thing!") !!!!! I am still guarded as it's only been five minutes since I did it and who knows what tomorrow will bring but for the moment I am bombing around in InDesign like it was mid 2024. Thank you!!!!

[rhinestonelife]

My entire computer is now back up to top speed as well! The mouse feels so free! Things all over happen immediately instead of 2 seconds after I click. Could the connection to the 20 recent files really been bogging down the whole thing? I hope they find your post and are able to diagnose this.

[Bertd]

After installing InDesign 20.2 every looks fine again....what a releaf! Thanks anyway Adobe!

[Lauren28566750fswi]

Oh that's great!   I'm so glad it helped!  It seems like the latest version might also fix it so I'm sorry this solution didn't come along sooner but hopefully it's sorted for good now!