InDesign Updates & Release Notes

Feature updates

• Review documents with updated rendering technology
  • InDesign now uses updated rendering technology to display documents and graphics, delivering a more consistent viewing experience. This update modernizes how InDesign renders page content across display modes and graphics workflows, helping improve visual consistency when viewing, zooming, scrolling, and working with complex documents. Most workflows remain unchanged, but some documents or graphics may display slightly differently as InDesign uses the updated rendering engine.
• Helper Text in Keyboard Shortcuts Search
  • Helper Text is now available in the Search field of the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

Fixed issues

• InDesign no longer crashes when dismissing the objects would leave the pasteboard alert dialog in Flex Layout workflow.
• [Windows only] InDesign no longer crashes when file paths contain multi-byte characters.
• [macOS only] Fixed an issue where documents appear blank in GPU Preview after switching displays or waking Mac from sleep.
• Shortcuts like Shift + F5 / Shift + F6 / Shift + F7 / Shift + F8 / Shift + F9 / Shift + F11 now work in the Search field in Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.
• Esc / Shift + Esc now works in the Search field of Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.
• Keyboard navigation in a transformed Flex Layout now stops correctly at locked child elements and displays an Object Locked message.
• [Flex Layout] Dragging an element out of a flex container while hovering on that element now works correctly.
• Effects like Drop Shadow no longer get displaced when objects are transformed.
• [macOS only] Links panel columns no longer collapse (shrink) when resizing or reordering columns.
• Exports for InCopy, snippets, ICML, and IDML no longer lose the width of the first column in a table (requires InCopy 21.6.0 or later).

Feature updates

• Table accessibility improvements in PDF and EPUB exports

  • Specify header rows, header columns, and captions in your table setup to include accessible table structure information in exported documents.

• Keyboard shortcut search

  • Search by command name or keyboard shortcut to quickly locate a specific menu item directly in the
    Keyboard Shortcuts
    dialog box.

• Data Merge enhancements

  • Added support for multiline records and UTF-8 encoded data files.

• HTML Preview plugin no longer required

  • Starting with InDesign 21.5, HTML previews generate without the HTML Preview plugin, and InDesign no longer displays an error if the plugin isn't installed.

• Manage your files faster from the home screen

  • Add local files as cloud documents, or download cloud documents to your device, directly from the home screen.

• Speed up accessibility work with bulk Alt Text operations

  • Generate or remove AI-generated
    Alt Text
    for multiple images at once, without affecting text you've written or edited manually.

• Missing font management in InCopy on the web (beta)

  • Add or request custom fonts directly from the Missing Fonts dialog box without leaving your workflow.

• Access
  Learn

  from the homescreen

  • For a cleaner, more focused workspace, the
    Learn
    option has been removed from the
    Window
    menu, and the
    Learn
    icon has been removed from the workspace. You can continue to access
    Learn

    from the homescreen, as always.

Fixed issues

• The primaryTextFrame property could not be set on a MasterSpread via InDesign scripting.
• Incorrect handling of Ampersands (&) in font family names and OpenType Stylistic Sets names.
• The
  Learn
  option isn't available in the Window menu.
• Data Merge did not support UTF-8 encoding.
• [Windows only] Users in Chinese Simplified are unable to use InDesign due to a subscription error.
• Content that isn't visible in the PDF appears when it's opened.
• Opening some PDFs duplicates images onto the pasteboard, degrading performance, and inflating the asset folder size.
• [Windows only] InDesign intermittently crashes during document recovery.
• [Windows only] InDesign intermittently crashes on quit.
• InDesign hangs with customer CEP Plugin.

Fixed issues

• Alt text message is truncated from right side.
• [Windows only] InDesign fails to locate the Times New Roman and Calibri fonts.
• [macOS only] Math Expression size gets larger and truncated on EPUB Interactive Preview Panel.
• [macOS only] InDesign requests permission to access data from other applications at launch.
• [Windows only] Indesign freezes and unexpectedly closes while opening IDML file containing double-hyphenated texts.
• [Windows only] When placing or updating linked files, InDesign hangs and shows a spinning cursor.
• Media files, groups, and interactive items are dropped off when None CSS Option is selected.
• The Blue border (focus) for the Flex icon is cut off on the right side in the Properties panel.
• Clicking on a footnote or endnote reference on EPUB preview, the page isn't redirecting to the footnote or endnote location.
• Fixed an issue where Share for Review 'Update Content' fails with 'Artifact error' for large InDesign documents.
• Keyboard shortcuts don’t work on transformed frames.
• Weird behaviour when the Add to flex frame action is done on a transformed interactive button or object states.
• Expose FlexObject to anchoredObjectSettings.
• Positioning of Flex Children isn't maintained correctly within Flex Container on Transforming Flex Layouts.
• URLs containing %27 were navigating to a 404 page in the published document.
• Issue with text appearance of placed WMF images.
• IDML export/import adds objects on master pages and dependent pages.
• Generate Alt Text feature is disabled and showing error, You do not have access to the Generate Alt Text feature.
• Fit Text feature is disabled for Type on a Path text objects in InDesign.
• Manually added alt text should not get removed when relinked from a missing link.
• [macOS only] InDesign intermittently crashes on Quit.
• Auto Alt Text causing crashes, freezing, and workflow disruptions in InDesign 21.2.
• CC Libraries panel freezes and becomes unresponsive in InDesign.
• InDesign crashes while saving to cloud-synced locations after a corrupt Windows update, resulting in document corruption.
• [Windows only] Users in Chinese Simplified are unable to use InDesign due to a subscription error.

Feature updates

• You can show or hide the Alt Text badge icon (View > Extras > Hide Alt Text Badge or Show Alt Text Badge). Hiding the badge does not remove alt text and does not affect accessible exports.

Fixed issues

• [macOS only] InDesign file becomes uneditable after using Share for InCopy on the web and then saving it back locally on macOS.
• [macOS only] Paper swatch applied to text has incorrect overprint settings.
• [macOS only] InDesign hangs at launch if the PDF preset folder lacks read permissions.
• [macOS only] Locate Object button is now available in the Layers panel.
• Provide an option to show/hide Alt Text adornment icon.
• Alt text added in the Accessibility section of Hyperlinks panel disappears when the file is saved as IDML.
• Incorrect image description when using the Generate Alt Text feature.
• The UXP WebView Support component should not be packaged or installed with InDesign Server.
• InDesign Server crashes when using the Adobe World-Ready Single-line Composer while interacting with multi-column text frames.
• InDesign intermittently crashes when opening or closing documents from a network location under low-memory conditions.
• InDesign intermittently crashes while opening the document.
• InDesign intermittently crashes while adding pages to the document.
• InDesign intermittently crashes while performing copy/paste of text containing hyperlinks.
• InDesign intermittently crashes during image placement.
• Documentation missing from InDesign Server installation directory.
• [Flex Layout] Elements added to the Article panel appear in incorrect sequence.
• [Flex Layout] Buttons and Object States cannot be applied directly to Flex child elements.
• IDML files with long indexes take excessive time to open.
• Page size changes in Alternate Layout after reopening the IDML file.
• Master page names are changed after IDML conversion.

Fixed issues

• [Windows only] Text becomes invisible during editing.
• [Windows only] InDesign is frequently clearing the Undo stack.
• Object Styles now support Size and Position values greater than 1440 pt.
• Plug-ins created with InDesign 21.0 SDK crashes InDesign 21.1 during hyperlink creation.
• The plug‑in’s document observer update function is no longer called when users switch between open InDesign documents.
• InDesign crashes on opening an IDML file with custom bullet character.
• Support for Size and Position values greater than 1440 pt in Object Styles has been extended to IDML round-tripping and Snippets/CC Libraries.
• Negative X/Y Position values in Object Styles are now preserved across Snippets/CC Libraries and IDML round-tripping.
• Conditional text setting is changing during IDML Export/Import.
• Showing text threads within IDML as in the original InDesign document.
• Custom page numbering is lost when saving as IDML if Automatic Page Numbering is selected and a number is entered in the Start At field.
• When converting an INDD file to IDML, Inner Glow, Size values over 12p6 incorrectly change to 0p7 in the exported file.
• [Windows only] Unexpected color changes occur on certain cell borders after exporting the document to IDML.
• When saving an InDesign file to IDML, the page size changes if margins are set to zero and the width/height is less than 6p0.
• [Windows only] PDFExportProvider object is being destroyed and recreated in the middle of an export, leading to an error.
• Crash on opening IDML when default object style has the same name as its style group.