PDF export on M1 machines is crippled

[Håvard Graudo]

After moving from Apple Intel to Apple Silicon InDesign now only exports one PDF at the time while all other exports are just "Queued". I am exporting many heavy files and on Intel Macs it handles four exports simultainously. On M1 it takes forever to export using one single CPU core while all the other CPU cores are idle. This is horrible.

However: if i force InDesign to run in Rosetta it exports four PDFs at once againg, using ≈ 450% CPU as it should. But then again ...  I don't want to run everything in Rosetta.

Same on Indesign v17 ("2022") and v18 ("2023").

[Bill Silbert · Accepted solution]

This sounds like something that should be entered as a feature request https://indesign.uservoice.com. 

[Håvard Graudo]

Is there a "please don't remove the features request" site?   🙃

[Håvard Graudo]

This is still as bad on InDesign v19 ("2024").

I timed it on a typical job. 10 PDFs produced from one single InDesign file (juggeling layers). A script lines them up. Running on a M2 Studio. The slowdown is extreme:

Running InDesign as Apple Silicon "optimized" code: 57 minutes

Running InDesign in Rosetta: 8 minutes