Stop all Adobe & Creative Cloud Processes on macOS via Script

Installing any Adobe Software on your computer comes with a huge load of bloatware. Stop all of this with a simple shell script.

Stop all Adobe & Creative Cloud Processes on macOS via Script
17 Feb 2025
|
2 min read

If you've installed any Adobe software that is distributed via their Creative Cloud launcher, you've probably seen that Adobe will run a huge load of processes in the background.

Adobe runs 13 processes of crap when launching any app

I don't think that anyone in Adobe's development department is talking to people beyond their team. How else would you land in such a huge mess?

Well, let's fix that and stop any Adobe related process with a simple script that you can even execute via Raycast.

Raycast

To execute the script, we need to move it to the scripts folder configured in Raycast. For that...

  1. in Raycast, type "Extensions" and open the Raycast Extensions Settings

  2. in the list, scroll down to "Script Commands"

  3. on the right side, hit "Add Directories" and select the folder, your F*ck Adobe script lives in

  4. you should see the script being available when typing "F*ck Adobe" in Raycast

You can also configure the script output to show in Raycast with @raycast.mode fullOutput

The Script

This is a the Shell script responsible for collecting & stopping all Adobe related processes. Please note that the script is optimize for macOS!

If you've found any other process names, please leave a comment so I can include those!

#!/bin/bash

# Required parameters:
# @raycast.schemaVersion 1
# @raycast.title F*ck Adobe
# @raycast.mode fullOutput
#
# Optional parameters:
# @raycast.packageName romanzipp
# @raycast.icon images/adobe.png
# @raycast.iconDark images/adobe.png

# Array of known Adobe process names
ADOBE_PROCESSES=(
    "Adobe Creative Cloud"
    "Adobe Desktop Service"
    "Adobe CEF Helper"
    "Adobe CCXProcess"
    "Adobe CC Library"
    "Adobe Photoshop"
    "Adobe Illustrator"
    "Adobe InDesign"
    "Adobe Premiere Pro"
    "Adobe After Effects"
    "Adobe Media Encoder"
    "Adobe Lightroom"
    "Adobe Lightroom Classic"
    "Adobe Acrobat DC"
    "Adobe Acrobat"
    "Adobe XD"
    "Adobe Bridge"
    "Adobe Camera Raw"
    "Adobe Dimension"
    "Adobe Fresco"
    "AdobeIPCBroker"
    "Adobe Update"
    "Adobe Update Helper"
    "AdobeGCClient"
    "AGMService"
    "AGSService"
    "CCLibrary"
    "CCXProcess"
    "CoreSync"
    "Creative Cloud Helper"
    "Creative Cloud Content Manager"
    "Adobe Desktop Service"
    "AdobeIPCBroker"
    "Adobe Desktop Service"
    "Creative Cloud Content Manager"
    "Creative Cloud UI Helper (Renderer)"
    "Creative Cloud Interprocess Service"
    "Creative Cloud Core Service"
    "Creative Cloud"
    "Creative Cloud Helper"
    "Creative Cloud Helper"
    "Creative Cloud Libraries Synchronizer"
    "Creative Cloud UI Helper (GPU)"
    "Creative Cloud UI Helper"
    "Creative Cloud UI Helper"
    "Adobe Creash Processor"
    "Adobe Content Synchronizer"
    "Adobe Content Synchronizer Finder Extension"
)

echo "Searching for Adobe processes..."
echo "--------------------------------"

killed_count=0

processes=$(ps -ef | grep -i "adobe\|creative cloud" | grep -v "grep")

while IFS= read -r line; do
    if [ -n "$line" ]; then
        pid=$(echo "$line" | awk '{print $2}')
        name=$(echo "$line" | awk '{$1=$2=$3=$4=$5=$6=$7=""; print $0}' | sed 's/^[ \t]*//')
        # echo "DEBUG: Found process - PID: $pid, Name: $name"

        for adobe_proc in "${ADOBE_PROCESSES[@]}"; do
            if echo "$name" | grep -qi "$adobe_proc"; then
                # echo "DEBUG: Match found for $adobe_proc"
                # echo "Killing process: $name (PID: $pid)"

                # Capture both stdout and stderr from kill command
                if ! error=$(kill -9 "$pid" 2>&1); then
                    echo "ERROR: Failed to kill process: $error"
                else
                    ((killed_count++))
                    echo "DEBUG: Successfully killed process"
                fi
                break
            fi
        done
    fi
done <<< "$processes"

echo "--------------------------------"
echo "Killed $killed_count Adobe-related processes"

If you want to also improve the experience of getting rid of Adobe stuff, you can add a preview icon to the script folder, referenced in @raycast.icon

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