Uninstalling Adobe Creative Cloud with a script

[cbrewer]

How to cleanly and properly uninstall Adobe Creative Cloud apps has been an ongoing Mac admin challenge for years. I recently came across this post by Anthony Reimer which details how to uninstall an Adobe app by it's sapCode and base install version number. I decided to see if that method could be automated to uninstall all currently installed Adobe apps. And it can!

Instead of specifying a baseVersion, my script looks at "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Uninstall" to find a list of Adobe apps currently available for uninstall. It then passes sapCode and current product version to the Setup executable.

I've also included additional code to specifically uninstall Acrobat and the Creative Cloud Desktop app.

I've only tested this on 2020 versions of Adobe apps so it may or may not be useful for older Creative Cloud apps. If you have some older installs out there, let me know if it works or not.

Edit: Now pulling sapCode and productVersion from the adbarg files instead of parsing them from the app uninstaller directory name.

#!/bin/bash

# uninstall adobe cc apps
# loosly based on: https://maclabs.jazzace.ca/2020/11/01/unistalling-adobe-apps.html
# and https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/admin-guide.html/enterprise/using/uninstall-creative-cloud-products.ug.html

function removeAdobeApps {

  uninstallDir="/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Uninstall"
  setup="/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Desktop Common/HDBox/Setup"

  if [[ -d "${uninstallDir}" ]] && [[ -f "${setup}" ]]; then
    adobeAppList=$(find "${uninstallDir}" -type f -maxdepth 1 -name "*.adbarg")

    IFS=$'
'

    for i in ${adobeAppList}; do
      if [[ -f "${i}" ]]; then
        appName=$(echo "${i}" | awk -F "/" '{print $NF}' | cut -d "." -f 1)
        echo "Attempting to uninstall ${appName}"
        sapCode=$(grep -e "^--sapCode=" "${i}" | awk -F "=" '{print $2}')
        echo "sapCode: ${sapCode}"
        prodVer=$(grep -e "^--productVersion=" "${i}" | awk -F "=" '{print $2}')
        echo "prouctVersion: ${prodVer}"
        "${setup}" --uninstall=1 --sapCode="${sapCode}" --productVersion="${prodVer}" --platform=osx10-64 --deleteUserPreferences=false
      fi
    done

    unset IFS
  else
    echo "No Adobe apps found to uninstall"
  fi

}

# Start

echo "Start first try..."
removeAdobeApps

echo "Start second try..."
removeAdobeApps

# Uninstall Acrobat DC 15
if [[ -f "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app/Contents/Helpers/Acrobat Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/RemoverTool" ]]; then
  echo "Attempting to uninstall Acrobat DC 15"
  "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app/Contents/Helpers/Acrobat Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/RemoverTool" "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app/Contents/Helpers/Acrobat Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/RemoverTool" "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app"
 fi 

# Uninstall Acrobat DC 18+
if [[ -f "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app/Contents/Helpers/Acrobat Uninstaller.app/Contents/Library/LaunchServices/com.adobe.Acrobat.RemoverTool" ]]; then
  echo "Attempting to uninstall Acrobat DC"
  "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app/Contents/Helpers/Acrobat Uninstaller.app/Contents/Library/LaunchServices/com.adobe.Acrobat.RemoverTool" "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app/Contents/Helpers/Acrobat Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/Acrobat Uninstaller" "/Applications/Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat.app"
fi

# Uninstall the Creative Cloud Desktop app
if [[ -f "/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud/Utils/Creative Cloud Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/Creative Cloud Uninstaller" ]]; then
  echo "Attempting to uninstall Creative Cloud Desktop"
  "/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud/Utils/Creative Cloud Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/Creative Cloud Uninstaller" -u
fi

exit 0

Edit 2: Latest version is on github.
https://github.com/cwmcbrewster/Adobe/blob/main/Uninstall_AdobeCreativeCloud.sh

[carlo_anselmi]

@cbrewer MANY THANKS FOR THIS!!! I have tested your script with the full CC2019 (plus a couple of CC2018 apps) and it works perfectly!
Have a great day

[austin_nill]

Cannot thank you enough!

Awesome, I've been frustrated with several different work flows over the past few months!

[austin_nill]

Actually seeing issues now with 2018 CC apps. Getting 130 and 135 Exit Codes. Restarting the machine to ensure that no Adobe tasks are on in the machine sometimes helps, but I'm getting 130 codes on trying to get rid of Dreamweaver CC 2018. Have the correct sapCode and baseVersion even if I just try to run that line of uninstall by itself.

Seems pretty hit or miss on getting rid of 2018 apps, on the current machine I'm testing it isn't seeing any of the .adbarg files in the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Uninstall folder for some reason. I can see them in the folder and they look the same as they did on the other machine that the script was able to remove all but Dreamweaver CC 2018.

[user-dxEGvQdlva]

Does this script work with JAMF School as well? Or does the script need to be modified?

[kacey3]

I am getting the 130 error on all of the Substance 3D packages. Did anyone every figure out what the cause of the 130 error is and how to fix it?

I'd prefer to not just delete the app folders after the fact.

[chrisB]

[deleted comment]

[cbrewer]

@chrisB Could you remove your post from this thread and start a new thread for your app? Thanks.

[Dpatschke]

This works great for AdobeCC 2021, unaltered FYI. What a lifesaver. Thanks!

[donmontalvo]

Awesome script, do you have it on GitHub?

PS, found one Launch Daemon that wasn't removed, hence the above ask. :)

$ launchctl list | grep adobe
27577 0 com.adobe.acc.installer.v2

Attached an image of Activity Monitor, not too worried about the crash entries, since they probably show because of Adobe's uninstallers. :)



I ended up running these three commands to finish it off:

$ sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2.plist
$ sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2.plist
$ sudo rm /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2

There might be some zombie processes running (or trying to) at the user level, so would log out and back in after the above.

[cbrewer]

https://github.com/cwmcbrewster/Adobe/blob/main/Uninstall_AdobeCreativeCloud.sh

Keep in mind this script is doing sanctioned adobe uninstalls using their setup binary. If additional manual cleanup is needed, that might be something to address with an additional script.

[sanbornc]

Hello All

Im getting this error when running the uninstall script above from Github, any idea what it means by "Bad CPU Type"?

Script result: Start first try...
No Adobe apps found to uninstall Start second try... No Adobe apps found to uninstall Attempting to uninstall Creative Cloud Desktop /Library/Application Support/JAMF/tmp/Uninstall Adobe Apps:44: bad CPU type in executable: /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud/Utils/Creative Cloud Uninstaller.app/Contents/MacOS/Creative Cloud Uninstaller

[kacey3]

I was having trouble uninstalling Acrobat Pro (DC) and this was exactly what I needed. Thanks!

[kwoodard]

I just tried this out with the 2023 version of Adobe CC. I have the entire suite installed. This script did not remove any apps, other than Adobe CC. Photoshop/Lightroom/everything was still there after the script ran.

[cbrewer]

I wasn't able to reproduce a problem with it uninstalling the 2023 apps in my environment. It appears to me that the 2023 apps use the same adbarg files in the same location and the Setup binary in the same location.

[kwoodard]

Yeah. When I ran it on my test machine…just the CC app was removed. 

[kacey3]

With the Adobe Cleanup Tool no longer working correctly, I have returned to this page to try and build a script to remove all applications (instead of just Acrobat Pro like the last time I was here), but I am finding that the computers I am working with do not have "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Desktop Common/HDBox/Setup" at all.

That's definitely causing an issue. Anyone else notice that file missing?

[kacey3]

It looks like maybe using the Cleanup Tool failed to uninstall anything, but succeeded at removing the "Adobe Desktop Common" folder. :eyeroll: