indd

InDesign ExtendScript Runner

Automate Adobe InDesign on macOS by generating an ExtendScript (.jsx) file and executing it inside a running InDesign application via AppleScript.

InDesign ExtendScript is ECMAScript 3 (old JavaScript) plus an InDesign-specific DOM and Adobe's File/Folder/$ host objects. It is not Node.js or modern JS — no let/const/arrow functions/JSON.parse/template literals. Use var, classic function expressions, and the idioms shown below.

Prerequisites

• macOS with Adobe InDesign installed (e.g. "Adobe InDesign 2026").
• The script runs against the currently running InDesign. Many scripts assume an open document via app.activeDocument — make sure InDesign is open with the relevant document, or have the script create one with app.documents.add(...).

How to run a script

1. Write the ExtendScript to a local file, e.g. /tmp/indesign-script.jsx.
2. Execute it with osascript, telling InDesign to do script ... language javascript:

osascript -e 'with timeout of 300 seconds
tell application "Adobe InDesign 2026"
do script (POSIX file "/tmp/indesign-script.jsx") language javascript
end tell
end timeout'

• Replace 2026 with the installed version year the user has (2024, 2025, 2026, …). Default to 2026 unless told otherwise.
• Always pass an absolute POSIX path to the .jsx file.
• Always wrap in with timeout of N seconds … end timeout. The default Apple event timeout is ~60s; longer scripts (enumerating app.fonts, placing images, building tables, exporting) fail with "AppleEvent timed out. (-1712)" without it. Verified: a font-enumeration script timed out at the default and succeeded with with timeout.
• stdout of osascript is the value of the last evaluated expression in the .jsx. That is why the scripts below end with logs.join('\n') — it returns the collected log lines to the shell so you can read the result.

A reusable one-liner (adjust version + path):