Adjust Content Dynamically with Adobe InDesign's New Flex Layout

Angelo Montilla
3 hours ago
3 min read

Adjusting layouts just got a little easier in Adobe InDesign with the newly released Flex Layout tool.

This game-changing feature – released at Adobe MAX 2025 – places content within a container which can be reflowed based on your layout.

In this tutorial, we'll go over how to use Flex Layout and look at ways it can be beneficial in your every day workflow.

Click the link below to download the tutorial exercise files to follow along step by step.

Open the InDesign document saved as Flex_Layout.indd, where you will find a page layout for a slide deck presentation.

In this example, let's say you wanted to readjust the layout so that the four images are on the far right side of the page instead of horizontally across the bottom. The new Flex Layout allows for that easily.

Here is a look at the layout.

To access the Flex Layout panel, make your way to Window > Flex Layout.

This will launch the panel and you can drag and dock it on the right side of the workspace so you have it for later use.

To work non-destructively, I recommend duplicating the layout instead of making changes to the current layout.

Right-click the page in the Pages panel and select Duplicate Page.

Double-click the second page in the pages panel to access the second page in the document.

Now before applying the flex layout, it's important to note that this feature reflows and adjusts spacing of content. It does't resize the content. So it's good practice to resize the content before applying the flex layout.

With Selection Tool, select all four grouped objects and while holding Shift + Command (Mac) or Shift + Ctrl (Windows) drag the top left corner inwards to decrease the size.

This is how the content should appear once resized:

Creating Flex Layout

Select all four grouped items again and in the Flex Layout panel – or Properties panel – click Create Flex Layout. This will place the content inside a container.
Adjust the container by clicking the top right handle and dragging it to the top of the margin and the left side is snapped to the fifth column in the layout.
To the right of the alignment options are values for the width and height of the container. Because the container has already been adjusted, using the guides on the page, there's no need to change the values. However, just know this is where it would be done.
Next, click the flex justification dropdown. Choosing an option here will depend on your specific layout. However in this example, let's choose Flex Start. This aligns the row to the start of the Flex Layout and aligns the items to the start of the row.
Set the Align to Top Center from the alignment grid.
Next, choose the Direction. By default it'll be stet to Row, but there are options for Reverse Row, Column, and Reverse Column. In this example, choose Column since we have two columns in the layout.
This will create one column within the container. To ensure it creates two columns within the frame, click the Wrap icon to the right of the Direction options.

Here is how the Flex Layout should look like to this point based on the settings explained above:

Now that the Flex Layout has the Direction and Wrap applied, it's time to adjust the spacing. The spacing – or padding – fields will be set to 0 by default. You can adjust these settings to add more space between the outer parts of the content and the container itself. In this case, I'll leave it on 0.
Instead, we'll adjust the Horizontal and Vertical spacing fields. Set the Horizontal to 56 px and the Vertical to 38 px.

Here is how the final Flex Layout will appear based on the settings explained above:

Another cool feature of the Flex Layout tool is that you can reposition content within the container.

For example, in the flex layout in this tutorial, click and drag the No. 2 group to the right of the No. 1 so the content flow clockwise.

Here is a look how that will appear.

That is a simple way of using the new Flex Layout in Adobe InDesign to adapt content without having to make adjustments manually.