Choose Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > General (macOS), and then choose the type of preferences you want to specify.
- InDesign User Guide
- Get to know InDesign
- Introduction to InDesign
- Workspace
- Generative AI
- Introduction to InDesign
- Create and layout documents
- Documents and pages
- Create documents
- Work with parent pages
- Work with document pages
- Set page size, margins, and bleed
- Work with files and templates
- Convert PDFs to InDesign files in InDesign (Beta)
- Create book files
- Add basic page numbering
- Number pages, chapters, and sections
- Convert QuarkXPress and PageMaker documents
- Share content
- Understand a basic managed-file workflow
- Save documents
- Grids
- Layout aids
- Documents and pages
- Add content
- Text
- Add text to frames
- Threading text
- South-East Asian Scripts
- Arabic and Hebrew features in InDesign
- Create type on a path
- Bullets and numbering
- Glyphs and special characters
- Text composition
- Text variables
- Generate QR codes
- Edit text
- Align text
- Wrap text around objects
- Anchored objects
- Linked content
- Format paragraphs
- Format characters
- Typography
- Format text
- Review text
- Spell check and language dictionaries
- Add references
- Styles
- Tables
- Interactivity
- Graphics
- Color and transparency
- Text
- Find and replace
- Share
- Publish
- Place, export, and publish
- Printing
- Extend InDesign
- Automation
- Troubleshooting
Preferences include settings such as panel positions, measurement options, and display options for graphics and typography. Preference settings specify how InDesign documents and objects behave initially.
Set general preferences
This section covers preference settings in the General tab of the Preferences dialog box. For information on other preferences, search for the appropriate setting.
-
-
Choose a page numbering method from the View menu in the Page Numbering section. (See Display absolute or section numbering in the Pages panel.)
-
Specify a threshold to trigger font subsetting based on the number of glyphs a font contains in the Font Downloading and Embedding section. This setting affects font downloading options in the Print and Export dialog boxes.
-
You can determine how scaled objects are reflected in panels and how the content of scaled frames behaves in the When Scaling section.
Select Apply To Content if you want the point size to change when a text frame is scaled. (See Scale type.) If this option is selected when a graphics frame is scaled, the percentage size of the image changes, but the frame reverts its percentage to 100%. (See Scale objects.)
Select Adjust Scaling Percentage to display the original point size with the new point size in parentheses when you scale text. If this option is selected when you scale graphics frames, the percentage size of both the frame and image changes.
-
Click Reset All Warning Dialogs to display all warnings, even the ones you’ve already checked not to display. (As warnings appear, you can select a check box to prevent the warning from appearing again.)
You can preview your InDesign documents in File Explorer (Windows) and Finder (macOS). Can't see the preview? Follow these steps to add or adjust the preview settings:
-
- Pages: Select the pages you want to save as previews from First Page, First 2 Pages, First 5 Pages, First 10 Pages, or All Pages. The default option is First 2 pages.
- Preview Size: Select the preview size of your document from Small 128x128, Medium 256x256, Large 512x512, or Extra Large 1024x1024. The default option is Large 512x512.
Configure scaling preferences in InDesign to uniformly scale the user interface based on your screen resolution. Elements of the user interface are scaled accordingly, making for comfortable viewing on high-resolution monitors. When you launch InDesign with fresh preference settings, it identifies your screen resolution and adjusts the application’s UI scaling accordingly.
Note: UI scaling is not supported on screens with low resolution.
To set the user interface scaling:
- (Win) Select Edit > Preferences > User Interface Scaling
- (macOS) Select InDesign > Preferences > User Interface Scaling
In the User Interface Scaling dialog, use the following options to customize the Interface:
- UI: Adjust the UI sizing slider to increase or decrease the scaling of the UI based on your requirement. In general, high-resolution monitors need a higher scaling factor. A preview of the scaled UI is displayed next to the slider. Restart InDesign to apply the updated settings. If you choose to restart later, changes will take effect the next time you launch InDesign.
The number of stops displayed in the slider depends on the resolution of your screen. More stops are displayed for screens with higher resolutions.
- Cursor: When enabled (ON by default), this option scales the cursor icons in proportion to the UI.
- Anchor Points, Handle, and Bounding Box Display Size: Adjust the slider to scale the display size of anchor points, direction handles, and bounding box.
Set defaults
If you change settings when no documents are open, your changes set the defaults for new documents. If a document is open when you change settings, the changes affect only that document.
Similarly, if you change settings when no objects are selected, your changes set the defaults for new objects.
Change default settings for new documents
-
Close all documents.
-
Change any menu items or panel or dialog box settings.
If you use the same page size and language for most documents, you can change these defaults with no document open. For example, to change the default page size, close all documents, choose File > Document Setup, and select the desired page size. To set a default dictionary, close all documents, choose Edit > Preferences > Dictionary (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > Dictionary (macOS), and select an option from the Language menu.
Specify default settings for new objects in a document
-
With the document open, choose Edit >Deselect All.
-
Change any menu items or panel or dialog box settings.
Restore all preferences and default settings
When InDesign is behaving erratically, deleting preferences (also referred to as “trashing preferences” or “removing preferences”) often solves the problem.
It’s a good idea to make a backup copy of the preference files called InDesign Defaults and InDesign SavedData. Instead of removing your preferences, you can copy these backup files over the problematic corrupt preference files and not lose any customizations.
Perform the following step as per your OS:
Windows: Start InDesign, and then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
macOS: While pressing Shift+Option+Command+Control, start InDesign. Click Yes when asked if you want to delete preference files.
You can restore the default preferences any time you want. When you select Reset Preferences On Quit, InDesign reverts to the default settings.
Various program preferences and default settings are stored in the Adobe InDesign preferences files. These files, including the InDesign Defaults file, are saved each time you exit from InDesign. For manual deletion or renaming, the location of the preference and cache files are as follows:
Replace [#] with the product version as 15.0 or 14.0. Replace [language] with your choice of locale like en_US or jp_JP.
macOS
Backup and reset preferences on macOS
Windows
Backup and reset preferences on Windows
|
macOS |
Windows |
Preferences |
~/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version [#] |
|
Cache |
~/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/Version [#] |
|
InDesign Defaults |
~/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version [#] |
|
InDesign SavedData |
~/Library/Caches/Adobe InDesign/Version [#] |
|
Re-creating the InDesign preference files restores settings to their defaults, so you lose custom settings associated with the old preference files.
About InDesign styles and presets
You can store settings for reuse, including settings for the following items:
- Create paragraph and character styles.
- Create object styles.
- Create table and cell styles.
- Customize PDF export presets.
- Create print presets. All the attributes in the Print dialog box are included in the style. (See Print a document or book.)
- Create trap presets.
- Create transparency flattener presets.
- Create the table of content styles.
- Save the workspace configuration.
- Create document presets.
- Create stroke styles.
In general, change the feature settings in the dialog box, and then save the settings. Styles and presets are stored in the document in which they are created. You can use the settings from another document by importing or loading the styles and presets from that document. In addition, most presets can be exported or saved to a separate file and distributed to other computers.
You can also share styles and presets across all documents in a book file. For more information, see Synchronize book documents.
Talk to us
We would love to hear from you. Share your thoughts with the Adobe InDesign Community.