Suppress Adobe CC Desktop App popup

wangl2
Contributor

Dear forum members,
Recently we deployed the Adobe Creative Cloud 2018 to the iMac labs. When I created the package, I forgot to uncheck the Desktop App. Now all the lab iMacs has it and when anyone logs, it just pops up. It is quite annoying, and if students accidentally logs in to the App, it might stuffed up the licensing. The CC for the Mac labs are serialized the old way while each student is licensed through Adobe Admin Portal for their Windows devices.
Does anyone tried to create a policy to stop Adobe Desktop App auto start when user logs in?
Thanks.

11 REPLIES 11

c_archibald
Contributor II

Just uninstall it with the uninstaller from:
/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud/Creative Cloud Uninstaller.app

or from Terminal:
/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud/Utils/Creative Cloud Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/Creative Cloud Uninstaller -u

I've been working on a .sh script that checks for all Adobe Products & Uninstalls outdated old versions if newer exist. You can just implement one that uninstalls it off all the scoped Macs you want.

Look
Valued Contributor III

It's probably being loaded by.

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist

You should be able to either move/remove the file or just disable the agent from the command line.

isaacnelson
Contributor

We have an enterprise license for Creative Cloud so it might be different for education, but as far as I can tell there is no way to prevent installation of the CC desktop app (the checkbox in the packager is checked by default and it's disabled so it can't be unchecked). It also won't uninstall until all CC applications are uninstalled. It seems that Adobe really wants the Creative Cloud Desktop to be on every machine.

That said, the Creative Cloud Packager does give the option of hiding the Apps panel in Creative Cloud Desktop. Hiding it prevents the user from downloading new apps or updating existing ones. It doesn't prevent the user from signing in with their personal Adobe ID and messing up the licensing, though. I haven't tried it, but maybe you could create a restricted software record in Jamf Pro to prevent Creative Cloud Desktop from running?

Look
Valued Contributor III

@isaacnelson If you are on named user licensing you cannot package without Desktop, if you have a serialised license you can choose not to include it. Adobe are extremely loath to give serialised licenses to anyone these days as they are trying to phase them out completely, but given they charge the earth and half again not many educational customers with 90% dormant student users are takers so they still offer the old licensing model in some cases.

isaacnelson
Contributor

@Look Gotcha. That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.

wangl2
Contributor

@isaacnelson I tried recently to create the package again using Adobe Cloud Packager, using serialized method. Even though I unchecked the Adobe Desktop App, it still got installed in the end.

isaacnelson
Contributor

@wangl2 Yeah, even when we were using serialized licenses we weren't able to build any packages without including CC Desktop. Pretty annoying. We've moved to named-user licenses though, so we actually do have need of it now so users can activate their software. We always choose the option to hide the apps panel and that keeps users from installing updates or additional apps on their own.

wangl2
Contributor

@isaacnelson We are using named-user method for our teachers and students on their notebooks. But we left the lab computers on the serialized method. Did Adobe ever say to you that DO NOT log on to Desktop App on the serialized computer because it might stuff up the license? I am finding it hard to control because when students are using the lab computers, they want to log on to grab their files.
Thanks.

isaacnelson
Contributor

@wangl2 Yes, signing in to CC Desktop will mess up licensing on a serialized machine. At one point one of my coworkers was forcibly removing CC Desktop from machines he manages to prevent that from happening, but it seems like doing that was causing additional problems for them. I'm afraid I don't really know of a good way to deal with the issue you're facing. 😕

bainter
Contributor

@wangl2 A user talking with Adobe support said the same, that signing in will create licensing issues. Why Adobe makes it so difficult is beyond my understanding.

djdavetrouble
Contributor III

I would say to reroll your package, I have never had ccda appear when I told CCP to not include it. I created serialized installs for enterprise for 2014, 2015, 2015.5 and 2018 . Signing in to CCDA will deserialize your account. Someone on macadmins slack in a lab was describing a way to convert from serial to named and back with every user that logged in to clear info....