So recently, while using CS6, I was hit with a message from 'Adobe Genuine Software Integrity Service' that looked like the following. I have a legit copy from my company but had installed CC demos to open up Illustrator files from CC in the past, and they're legal. I'm not sure what I did to trigger this, but I found others who had been somehow dragnetted as well.
Being busy and also currently using Pixelmator Pro with some moderate success, I opted for the nuclear option and found the Adobe CC Cleaner Tool. Surely that should clear up the annoying pop-up? I removed all of the Adobe software on my computer and decided I'd reinstall Photoshop when I needed to again... and yet the pop up persisted after I had deleted all Adobe products off my computer. The popup didn't have a close button, and clicking 'learn more' didn't remove it. I used the activity monitor and saw it was still running the Adobe Geniune task and force quit it. Hours later, it was back. This annoyed me.
Ccleaner
As a UX developer, nothing irks me more than dark UX. The pop-up software failed to recognize I had removed the software in question, and better yet, why the hell is it still there if I removed all of my Adobe software? That felt deeply dishonest. Fortunately, I know how to grep
and use htop
. I debated for posting this as I might be helping out some would-be pirates but I'm annoyed that someone like me was sideswiped by this.
- Launch Activity Monitor from Applications -> Utilities on your Mac. View all the running processes and force quit any of the Adobe ones, especially the Adobe Genuine instances.
- Go to
~/Library/LaunchAgents
and look for thecom.adobe.GC.Invoker-1.0.plist
although the version may change after you have read this. Trash anything with the adobe. - Go to
/Library/Application Support/Adobe
and delete theAdobeGCClient
directory
I can't say the messaging will return if I try to re-install Photoshop but at least it's stopped the damn pop up. Buy software, support your developers, but also... I might recommend supporting someone other than Adobe, like Bohemian Coding (Sketch), Affinity, and Pixelmator. Please don't email me asking for help on this topic, as I'm not in the business of assisting software pirates.
Do you not use Photoshop, Illustrator or Acrobat anymore but have current or previous installs? Dissatisfied with uninstallers, want to speed things up and reclaim disk space? Scroll down for 2 steps to remove all things Adobe (except Flash).
Enduring Adobe
The latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool is 4.3 on Mac Informer. It is a perfect match for the System Tools category. The app is developed by Adobe Systems Inc. And its user rating is 5 out of 5. The Creative Cloud Cleaner tool is a clean-up tool that removes certain files, folders, and registry keys that interfere with a new installation or update. This tool can fix most installation issues by cleaning. Uninstall Creative Cloud App From your Mac desktop, make sure that Finder is the active application and choose Go Utilities from the menu bar at the top of the screen. This will launch a new Finder window and display the Utilities folder. Alternatively, you can navigate in Finder directly to Macintosh HDApplicationsUtilitiesAdobe Installers.
My first Apple computer was a 2002 iMac G4 on nascent OS X Puma. My dad's coworker Sara was a Mac user too. Soon, Sara helped me install a pre-Creative Suite version of Photoshop.
Since then I've migrated through 5 Macs keeping Adobe software installed all along the way.
In this tutorial I show you how you can clean up some hard drive space in the spirit of spring cleaning. Just download and install Apeaksoft Mac Cleaner, launch the program on your Mac. Choose the 'ToolKit' menu from the user interface of the program to scan for the installed Adobe applications, such as Adobe Cloud Creative, Flash Player, Adobe Reader and more. Step 2 Scan the Adobe applications on Mac.
Lately, the 4 year old and last subscription-less CS6 hardly seems compatible on my 2015 MacBook running El Capitan. Been using Sketch to draw anyway, Preview for PDFs, and there are too many photo editing apps out now. Good run Adobe but it's time to go.
Removing Adobe in 2 Steps
Step 1: Try One Last Uninstaller
Download and run the Adobe Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool, their multi-app uninstaller and wipe assistant. Adobe does recommend running individual application uninstallers first, your call. Click the Clean All option.
This works ok. Files are deleted conservatively and the tool even sneaks some of its own into your system. My MacBook logged hundreds of deletions including launchds, which was nice. However, there were 13 errors and the process did not complete. Adobe folders and files remain.
Step 2: Type a One Line Command
The CC Cleaner Tool is a fair start but to see for yourself, open Terminal and use these commands. Adobe leftovers still living in your system!
Clean My Mac
Summary of my results:
The One-Liner
After running the Adobe CC Cleaner Tool, open Terminal and copy paste the following command to remove all of the above listed files and folders. Administrator password and a restart are required:
I reclaimed over 9 GB after these 2 steps removing apps, files and processes. Not surprising though, Flash broke so you may want to download and reinstall that.
Splitting the above into 2, here is 1 line for User files only:
Another for Systems files only (admin password and restart required):
Shout out Quora and StackExchange for assists with this.