When Sidekick needs to be updated

Sidekick reached the AI Assistant but the two sides aren’t compatible — typically the InDesign plugin and the Sidekick extension in your AI Assistant are on incompatible versions, and there’s no automatic fix path available.

What to do:

1. Update the InDesign plugin through Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop or Adobe Exchange. Most users have auto-update enabled, so this should happen automatically over the next minutes or hours.
2. Update the Sidekick extension in your AI Assistant — for Claude Desktop, restarting it picks up the latest version. It has to be a full quit, though, not just closing the window (see below).
3. If both sides claim to be up to date but Sidekick still shows this message, the install guide covers reinstalling either side cleanly.

Fully quitting your AI Assistant

Closing the window often isn’t enough — the app keeps running in the background, so nothing actually restarts and no update is picked up. This catches people out on Windows in particular.

• Windows: closing the window leaves Claude Desktop running in the system tray. Right-click its icon down by the clock — you may need the ^ arrow to reveal hidden icons — and choose Quit. If you can’t find it there, open Task Manager and end every Claude task.
• macOS: press Cmd+Q, or right-click Claude in the Dock and choose Quit. Closing the window on its own leaves it running.

Restarting your computer works too, and is the surest option if you’re not certain.