If you decide to move to another post-processing tool and you want to completely uninstall and remove all Adobe Creative Cloud applications, you might come across some issues. In this article, I want to share the process of completely removing Adobe software from both PC and Mac hardware.
I recently transitioned my laptop to another family member and I wanted to completely remove all unrelated software, including Adobe Creative Cloud. Something that was supposed to be an extremely simple task of software uninstallation turned out to be a long and painful process. The good news is, I was able to successfully remove all Adobe software from the laptop. The bad news is, it took me much longer than I anticipated, thanks to all the bloatware Adobe installed on my computer without my permission.
How to Remove Adobe Creative Cloud from Your PC
The process of removal of Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) software should be simple, according to Adobe. You should first remove all Adobe apps from the CC desktop app, then remove Adobe CC desktop app itself. In reality, the process of removing Adobe software turned out to be much more complicated. Here are the steps you might need to go through:
- Sign in to Adobe CC desktop app.
- Remove all Adobe apps such as Photoshop and Lightroom using the Creative Cloud desktop app.
- If any of the software fails to uninstall, go to Control Panel and remove it from there.
- Once all Adobe apps are removed, uninstall Adobe CC desktop software from the Control Panel.
- If Adobe CC desktop software does not uninstall, download and run Adobe CC uninstaller software.
- Once Adobe CC desktop software is completely removed, remove all other Adobe bloatware present on the computer using the Adobe CC Cleaner Tool.
- Reboot the computer.
- Remove all Adobe folders in local storage.
Sign in to Adobe CC Desktop App
I have to admit, requiring one to sign in to the Creative Cloud desktop app just to remove all Adobe apps is already ridiculous. I cannot think of a single piece of software I have used in the past that made me type in my username and password just to start the software removal process.
While you technically can remove individual Adobe software components using the Control Panel, it is not the recommended practice, since the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app must be in sync with what is installed or removed from the computer. Therefore, it is best that you sign in and remove all the apps using the desktop app:
I am not sure what Adobe expects people with no Creative Cloud credentials to do when removing Adobe software. In my case, my family member does not have an Adobe CC account, so if I did not sign in and remove the software for them, they would have to go through a different process of software removal.
Remove All Adobe Creative Cloud Apps
Once you log in, you will need to remove all Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop and Lightroom using the same desktop app. Click on the “Apps” tab, then “Installed Apps”, then scroll down to the installed app and click the little down arrow next to “Open” or “Update”, then click “Manage” -> “Uninstall”. If you are not planning to use Adobe Creative Cloud software in the near future, select the “Yes, Remove App Preferences” option when you are prompted. This should start the process of app removal.
If nothing happens after more than 10-15 seconds, close out of the Adobe CC desktop app, then manually remove the Adobe app using the Control Panel.
Remove Adobe CC Desktop App
The Adobe CC desktop app is the main piece of software that allows you to install and remove Adobe apps. Once all Adobe apps are removed, the next step is to remove the Adobe CC desktop app itself.
You can do so by visiting “Add / Remove Programs” (also known as “Programs and Features” in Windows 10) in Control Panel and uninstalling the Adobe Creative Cloud App component manually. You will be presented with a pop-up screen like this:
Unfortunately, thanks to all the bloatware that Adobe installs on most PCs, the process of removing this app will most likely end up with the below error:
Although I knew for a fact that there was not a single Adobe Creative Cloud applications left to uninstall, I still could not remove the desktop app. Here is a screenshot of the Adobe CC desktop app, which shows nothing is installed:
And here is a screenshot from “Programs and Features”, which shows there is nothing Adobe-related left on the computer:
Despite this, the Adobe CC desktop app still failed to uninstall, so the next step was to download and run the Adobe CC uninstaller software.
Download and Run Adobe CC Uninstaller
Once again, requiring anyone to download and run a separate tool just to remove software is ridiculous – it only shows how poorly Adobe software is developed. Software vendors usually do that as a last resort when software gets corrupted. And as you will see further down below, you might need more than one tool to completely get rid of everything.
To download the Adobe CC Uninstaller, visit this page, scroll down and download the ZIP file. Once the file is downloaded, open it up and run the Uninstaller.
If everything goes well, you should see the following screen:
Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app is now removed.
Remove Adobe’s Bloatware
The next step is to remove the rest of Adobe’s bloatware that gets installed without your permission. That’s right, Adobe silently installs a bunch of software that you might not know about. Some of this software runs continuously in the background, even if you have zero Adobe apps left on the computer, as you will see further down below.
Download the Adobe CC Cleaner tool using this link. Make sure to run the tool as Administrator by right-clicking it (the tool won’t be able to clean everything up without the right privileges), and selecting “Run as Administrator”. You will be presented with a screen that looks like this:
You will see two options: English and Japanese for selecting the language. Type “e” and press Enter. You will then see the following screen that requires you to agree to Adobe’s terms, which basically state that Adobe is not responsible for any damage the software might cause:
You will need to type “y” and press Enter to proceed. From there, the next screen will show you all the bloatware Adobe left on your computer:
Wow, that’s a lot of stuff that’s left over I had no idea about. Note that none of this stuff is found in the App section of Control Panel in the computer. I went ahead and typed “6” to “Clean All”, only to be presented with an error:
I had to run the tool twice to clean up the list.
Now that the cleaner removed all Adobe software, my next step was to remove all the relevant folders that are left over in Program Files folder in my computer. Except…I could not remove them due to other Adobe software that was running on the computer:
The Adobe folder was in use. The two folders that failed to remove were these:
That’s right, Adobe has even more bloatware that runs without your permission. One such piece of software is called “Adobe GC Invoker Utility”, which automatically runs on start up every time you reboot. I looked it up, and it is supposedly software that makes sure that you don’t pirate the software. It always runs in the background and it does not get removed when you use the uninstaller, or Adobe’s cleaner tool.
Here it is, sitting along all other apps that run when the computer restarts:
Although you can just disable it from running on start-up, I would recommend to remove it completely.
Remove Adobe GC Invoker
NOTE: The next step involves running Windows Registry Editor, so you have to be very careful – only delete exactly what I show you below or you could corrupt your Windows installation!
Run “regedit” (Windows Registry Editor) as Administrator and navigate to: Computer -> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Microsoft -> Windows -> CurrentVersion -> Run
If you don’t want to go through all the trees within the registry editor, simply search for “AdobeGCInvoker-1.0”. Manually delete this key from the registry by selecting it, and pressing the Delete button. Close out of the registry editor.
Reboot Computer and Manually Remove Remaining Adobe Folders
The last step is to reboot your computer and manually remove the remaining Adobe folders. Here is a list of folders that you need to delete:
- C:\Program Files\Adobe
- C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe
- C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe
If you are really anal about getting every Adobe-related folder deleted from your computer, search for “Adobe” folders on your computer and delete them. However, I would only recommend this step if you really know what you are doing. My suggestion is to only remove specific folders that might be sitting in Users -> Your Username folder, as well as any Temp folders.
How to Remove Adobe Creative Cloud from Your Mac
After I wrote the section on removing Adobe Creative Cloud from PCs, I decided to go through the process of removing Adobe Creative Cloud from Macs as well, since many of our readers run Creative Cloud from their Mac desktops and laptops. Here is what you will need to do:
- Sign in to Adobe CC desktop app.
- Remove all Adobe apps such as Photoshop and Lightroom using the Creative Cloud desktop app.
- Download and run Adobe CC uninstaller software.
- Remove all Adobe folders in local storage.
Sign In and Remove Adobe CC Apps
Similar to the PC instructions, the first step is to sign in to the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app, if you have not already done so. After that, make sure to go through all existing apps and remove them one by one until there is nothing left.
Remove Adobe CC Desktop App
After you go through the first two steps (which are identical to the PC steps), download the Mac version of the Adobe CC uninstaller software from here.
When you run the tool, you will be asked to type your system login/password:
On the next screen, you will be warned that the app was downloaded from the Internet. Click “Open”:
A new screen will come up, asking if you want to remove the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app:
Go ahead and click “Uninstall” to start the removal process. It will take a little bit of time to remove the desktop app. At the end of the process, you will be shown the following screen:
Remove all Adobe Folders
Once the desktop app is removed, navigate to your “Application” folder and move all Adobe folders to Trash. You should see a list of folders similar to below:
The next step is to remove Adobe applications from the “Utilities” folder (found under Applications -> Utilities). Navigate there, then select all Adobe folders such as “Adobe Application Manager” and “Adobe Installers” and move them to Trash.
There are more Adobe folders under Library -> Application Support, and possibly in other locations. Before you decide to remove any of those folders, make sure that you have no other Adobe software left on your computer.
The last step is to empty the Trash bin, which should uninstall and remove any other remaining Adobe apps.
Congratulations, you should now be completely Adobe-free on your PC or Mac if you followed this guide.
WOW! I had a lot more respect for you until this rant. I realize you do no like Adobe but man, this was childish. I’m sure glad I didn’t have to go though the same procedure to delete your web link from my computer.
Rick, thanks for your feedback. Uninstalling software should not be this painful. Adobe should not be installing software that runs in the background, which you cannot remove until you edit the registry and manually remove files. One could expect this from malware and spyware, but not from a big software company like Adobe that has millions of installations worldwide.
By writing this post, I’m hoping that Adobe engineers pay more attention to their software practices. I’m hoping that they do a better job than making us go through all these pains – this is just not right!
I’m sorry that you found this post to be childish. I was honestly very frustrated when going through the process. If I offended you in any way with this post, I sincerely apologize.
Have a good weekend!
Nasim, I certainly can understand your frustation with totally ridding your computer of Adobes software. I to have spent much time over the years editing the registry and manually deleting files and folders of various programs. As always your information is invaluable to scores of users that want to clean up their computer.
I guess I was just so surprised with your written frustration that it must have been catchy and frustrated me. I apologize to you and appreciate your reply.
Best to you.
Rick, thank you for understanding. I went back and updated the article and removed references to “crapware”, replacing them with a better word “bloatware”, since that’s the more common term. This way, I hopefully won’t offend anyone, making it a clean instruction on how to remove software (which was the original intent of the article). Sometimes it is hard to hide our frustrations when writing such posts, but I should know better, so thank you for pointing it out.
As always, our intention with Photography Life is to be a useful resource and a place of knowledge to our readers. If at any point of time you find anything that looks offensive to you, please let us know and we will take care of it. We never want our comments sections to be full of hate – there is enough of that in the world!
Bad road, that one, apologising for “offending” someone. There’s always somebody who feels offended, it’s a subjective feeling, and it’s on the offended, not the supposed offender.
Thanks Nasim. I’ve been looking for such a checklist while uninstalling Adobe. It’s such a pain. I feel like it’s everywhere on my PC. Thanks again
I for one really appreciate all this information. Although I don’t plan on deleting anything at the moment, I probably could not find it later.
I just got a new gaming computer from the big box store. It’s filled with bloat ware from Microsoft. Why should we expect different from Adobe?
Judy, thank you for your feedback.
In my opinion, no software company should be installing bloatware, including Microsoft. It is just not right and we should be able to voice our concerns. Adobe is a reputable company and they should make the process of installing and uninstalling their software simple. Why can’t we use a single uninstall process instead of having to download multiple different tools, only to find that they don’t completely clean up our computers? It is frustrating that we have to deal with all this just to keep our computers clean…
I agree! As an IT support person at a university I can say that Adobe is shooting itself in the foot right now. Adobe just want to make your life hard by not supplying a decent tool to delete its software completely. This is a company bullying its customers. Once upon a time a I started to use Apples Aperture which I still think in many ways was better than Lr is today but those were times …
My workflow these days is FastRawViewer->DxO Photolab->Luminar Flex/Affinity Photo. Cataloging is done in NeoFinder.
Gunther, I also spent many years in the IT industry and I just don’t understand why we have to deal with so much bloatware and malware today. We as IT people understand how to clean up computers, but what is a non-tech person supposed to do? Adobe should know better.
I know that Adobe’s management reads my posts. I really hope they decide to take action on these issues!
I’ve been seeing you cry and complain over the years about Adobe and how there was not an alternative out there (when there was), you may not have liked it, but there was an alternative. Now that you have several choices, you just can’t seem to let it go. Just move on to whatever piece of software that works best for you. Did Adobe not invite you to one of their parties or something? Geesh! Get over it and move on already!
Neo, I do use different software and I don’t depend on Adobe. I wrote this post so that if someone else comes across the same problem, they can follow the guide and clean up their machines.
Yes, I have criticized Adobe in the past and I do point out issues when I see them (and not just with Adobe). PL does not go to sponsored events and parties. We are free to express whatever opinions we might have about a given product. It is not a personal issue by any means and I am sorry if it came across this way…
Thanks for the description, working in the business it is such as shame to see this example of ‘dark design’ user experience. Takes seconds to install and tens of minutes to uninstall, and thats only for people who really know what they are doing.
I’m nearly ready to stop using Adobe after a decaded of fairly heavy use.
Thank you Nasim. I have been an Adobe user since CS 4. Unfortunately my experience with Adobe has been frustrating in the last couple of years. Your topic is right on mark for me.
As a side note, would you consider mentioning other pieces of software as well each time you are sharing Adobe product how-to’s in your future articles?
Nasim,
Gone through the pain of removing Adobe Cloud Software 2 years ago. It’s great you described the procedure in details, because today I don’t remember anymore what I had to do to remove it 100%.
Thumb up for your article above!!
I use the free utility SEARCH EVERYTHING after I remove a program to find even more loose ends.
I hate companies that make such poorly designed uninstallation processes.
Also, if you’re going to uninstall Adobe CC, you should try darktable. It’s coming out with a new 3.0 with an upgraded UI and many other features this year.
This won’t help for an already installed scenario but putting things like CC on a virtual machine is a great way to create separation between the computer and CC. It isolates the application and disposal is simply deleting the virtual machine.
Adobe lost me the minute they introduced the subscription model. I’m still using CS6; the only downside is having to convert my Z6 raw files into DNG before I edit them. Honestly, I would like to see an option just to buy the software. I have enough hungry mouths chewing on my credit card already. I even have an ancient copy of Photoshop 5.5 running which I use for simple tasks. Early versions of Adobe and MS show how big and bloated these programs have become.
Just pirate Photoshop. Really. Just do it. Reddit is your friend.
Nasim,
This is awesome information and I really appreciate you sharing and posting! It also irritates me all this background crap that some software vendors install. But, what irritates me even more are those commenters who are bickering about this valuable information you have FREELY shared.
A couple of weeks ago, after I tried some simpler and basic fixes, I went through the same process you did (minus the registry edits) uninstalling everything Adobe, in an attempt to fix a major LR problem. After I reinstalled all of my Adobe apps, my problem was resolved. Not sure what the root cause was, probably something Adobe or maybe a Windows’ update. My point here is there may be a real need to fully remove all Adobe apps and components from your PC for other reasons such as fixing a problem and you have provided us a clean and simple procedure.
Personally, I appreciate all your posts calling out Adobe and suggesting alternate editing software. I’m hopeful in the long run this will help all us who plan to stick with LR . (Yes, I believe Adobe is a bully I don’t like their business tactics and philosophy, but I’ve been using LR for so long I just don’t want to learn a new tool. The sad thing is, Adobe knows this.)
I’m quite sure this is my very first comment on your site and I must say the content you post is outstanding, there is not another general photography web resource out there that even comes close. Thank you!
Thank you so much Nasim for the detailed instructions. I did remove Adobe CC last year itself, but without such elaborate process, so I guess it was not removed completely. Fortunately or unfortunately, my PC almost crashed after a few months and I had to format it and re-install windows. Hopefully that got rid of all that bloatware completely. In any case, I’ll go check once again.
Thank you for this checklist, saved me a lot of time.
Another thing, Adobe automatically extends your subscription by one year at the end, this has been banned in the EU for years, every subscription can be canceled monthly after it is ended. I send them the following:
I am trying to cancel my creative cloud subscription
This is the message I get, cancellation fee of 50 % !!!!
this is not allowed in the Netherlands !!!!!
So please do your job. I have the right to cancel it per month and You know this, so cancel my subscription that I have it since 26 october 2014 !! now.
This was what I send at the end to solve it, took me one hour !!
you should run ‘sc delete agsservice’ and ‘sc delete agmservice’ in cmd in admin mode before deleting the “Common” directory.
Thank you very much for your extensive instructions! You’re absolutely right: removing software that you no longer want to use, should be straightforward and not a cumbersome process!
LSG
On a related note… a few nights ago I wanted to install the current version of Adobe Bridge, which is a “free” install on the Adobe site. When I launched the installer, a message appeared that Adobe Creative Cloud was getting installed. I was okay with that and let the process continue. The installer ran for almost 5 minutes and was only 2% complete so I stopped the install. I figured a whole bunch of garbage was getting installed on my machine. I was worried about my machine’s performance after the install, and if I would be able to get it all off my machine if I decided to stop using it. It’s really too bad.