When using the selection tool in InDesign, my page goes blank (white)

[Christel23191330wocb]

Hi, 

When trying to select objects or change text fields in InDesign, the page becomes white.

I am using InDesign 18.5 on a Mac Studio M2 Max.

Any solution welcome!

[Christel23191330wocb]

I uninstalled and reinstalled InDesign. 

It seems to only happen when overprint preview is off. 

[leo.r]

Are you on macOS 14 Sonoma? InDesign doesn't officially support Sonoma yet. Check this thread, recent posts discuss similar issues on Sonoma:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/indesign-flashing-screen-when-moving-objects/td-...

[Christel23191330wocb]

Yes I installed it recently - didn't have the problem before. 

Thanks so much!

[Bill Silbert]

In addition to the compatibility problem with Sonoma you should be aware that Creative Cloud programs are not yet fully compatible with the M2 chip of your Mac Studio. Reports from users have said that the programs work erratically with the M2 chip.

[Christel23191330wocb]

Thanks for your excellent update @Bill Silbert - where might I read up more on the subject and how do you think this problem will be addressed? 

[Bill Silbert]

At this time there does not appear to be a clearcut answer as to how this will be addressed. At least not any that I could find. When the M1 Macs came out users were able to install Apple's emulation software called Rosetta 2. This allowed users to use versions of programs created for Intel Macs on the M1. I have not seen any such consideration for programs that work well on the M1 computers to function correctly on the M2. As I recall it took Adobe several months to bring out versions of Creative Cloud programs that operated natively on the M1s. You can probably expect that to be the case with the M2. Factoring that in with compatibility issues with Sonoma doesn't actually paint any better picture. In my opinion the responsibility for this situation lies with Apple who do not provide any advance notice of program compatibilty requirements for their new hardware and software releases.

[Randy Hagan]

You can read more about compatibility between MacOS 14 Sonoma and existing Adobe apps through this link.

Randy

[Bruncek]

hi,

try with ...
Preferences - GPU Performance 

[Barb Binder]

Hi Christel:

Was it working OK on your M2 prior to the Sonoma uprade? You can roll back to Ventura:
https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/macos-sonoma-downgrade-to-ventura/#:~:text=Essentially%2C%20...

Sonoma was just officially released 3 days ago (9/26/23)—it was in beta before that. It's always good idea to delay an OS upgrade until you have time to research the compatibility, and in your case it's double whammy—both the OS and the chip are both unsupported. You might want to bookmark this page and check back in a few weeks. Upgrades from Adobe are typically announced the first day of MAX, which is Oct 10 this year. 

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/system-requirements.html

~Barb

[Christel23191330wocb]

Thanks for your great advice - I guess I was too excited before doing research and keeping myself informed.

Let's hope the upgrades work.

Best,

Christel 

[Rick Meikle]

I have a new Mac mini M2 Pro and just upgraded to Sonoma. InDesign 19.0 seems to be working, though I haven’t gotten very far. When drag selecting any item(s), the page goes white (empty). Its contents reappear when the drag is completed. Selecting single or multiple items by clicking (or shift-clicking) on them does not have this problem. The same thing happens while drag selecting text with the text tool. The problem is weirdly similar to a current Photoshop problem, which was also present in Ventura. When more than one Photoshop image is open, the last active image goes blank gray (not grayscale) when a new image is opened or a different open image is made active (clicked on). The blank gray image is corrected when that image is made active again and made to redraw (e.g, moving the window). But then the previously active window goes blank gray. These things never happen on my trusty old 2010 Mac Pro running Mojave. I don’t expect anyone here to have fixes, so this post is simply providing input to the community.

[BobLevine]

This has been discussed in countless other threads.

Roll back to Ventura; turn off rulers/enable GPU Performance or any combination.

[Rick Meikle]

Well, that was kind of snarky, but thanks for the feedback. I did several searches and this post was what I found. Pray tell what search terms find "countless other threads"? The M2 is not that new. I've been making my living with Adobe products since 1987, but is the Mac now taking a decided backseat to Windows? (Yes, Sonoma is new. I may be conflating things. The Photoshop problem includes Ventura. I leapfrogged from Mojave to Ventura. And, while Illustrator debuted in the 80s, Pagemaker was originally from Aldus, then after Adobe acquired it, was supplanted by InDesign. Rather than revert to Ventura, I am more likely simply to use the 2010 Mac Pro until Adobe and/or Apple get it together.)

[BobLevine]

Well, it is in my life. I build my own machines and they just kinda work. And you can laugh all you want or not, but Microsoft does seem to take backward compatibility far more seriously than Apple.

[Rick Meikle]

That may be the Apple Silicon effect. Anyway, I turned off rulers, which of course, works. But better is enabling GPU performance (which allows rulers). It didn't even occur to me that GPU performance might be off by default, or that it might have anything to do with the problem. The tangled web we weave! Well, Adobe/Apple anyway.

[Voyce216]

Try going under "View" and select "hide rulers". That seemed to work for me. I hope this helps someone who is looking for the same solution. 

[rogers g]

Hi Voyce,

I have been having this problem about a week and it was anoying. Preiously worked until I updated to Sonoma. Did what you recomended and Worked. I'm so happy. 

Thank you so much.

[Mollie5C71]

This just worked for me! My goodness, thank you!!!

[mthompson.creative]

This was the easiest solution - thank you! It was so annoying trying to make selections when it blacked out and turned white...

[leo.r]

This was the easiest solution - thank you! It was so annoying trying to make selections when it blacked out and turned white...

By @mthompson.creative

Are you running the latest version, macOS 14.6? This issue has been solved ever since 14.3.

[mthompson.creative]

Still on 14.0. I'm living in a production environment and each new update seems to kill some type of extension or software.... so I try to live a bit behind the curve to avoid creating delays.

[leo.r]

Still on 14.0. I'm living in a production environment and each new update seems to kill some type of extension or software.... so I try to live a bit behind the curve to avoid creating delays.

By @mthompson.creative

I understand your update philosophy. However, in this particular case, you're staying with the very first Sonoma release that's notoriously problematic. Especially as far as InDesign is concerned. Updating to the latest Sonoma will fix several issues with InDesign as well as some other problems of the first release.