I am not having much success following this method.

Instead of using a VM, I had a fresh install of MacOS 15.3 (Sequioa) where I followed the install procedure exactly for InDesign, After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator. Patched everything with Zii. Then I transfered all these installed application folders to an external drive and re-installed MacOS. No problems so far.

(Sidenote: on this throw-away MacOS installation (infected by Adobe bloatware) for fun I uninstalled the Creative Cloud-app to see if any of the Adobe apps would keep working. Some of them did, but not InDesign who appear to have some dependencies for its ‘choosing formats’ launch screen within the CC-app).

After having re-installed MacOS I dragged the patched Adobe application folders from the external HD to the Applications folder on my new install of MacOS 15.3. Only one application would launch (Photoshop as far as I recall). None of the other applications will launch.

I will say this confirms my first anticipation about this method. For example, Quick look preview for Adobe file types (.indd) in MacOS are installed by the Adobe apps to various locations outside of the Adobe app-folders.

The tutorial and guide seem pretty thoroughly made by a person who knows their stuff, so I am genuinely curious as to why my results are so inferior to those I assume the author must be getting since they made the effort to write the guide.

What I have ended up doing is using the Adobe Packager Manager to get the official packages and then patching these with the Adobe Activator from cmacked. This requires granting root privileges to the Activator which is definitely a sketchy piece of software.

Up for troubleshooting with the original author of the guide if there is any interest.

The information in this post is also available here in a nicer layout, with additional details. I was slow to discover it so putting a link for others to find easily: https://wiki.dbzer0.com/adobezii/

Appreciate your responding, thanks.

Totally boggles my mind that all I need to copy is the .app file. Will try it! Your guide does seem pretty thorough and well-tested. I hope this means my system will not have all the Adobe bloatware background processes.

I’m prepared to do a little mixing and matching with versions with macos/adobe versions. Sheesh if only there was a reasonable way to run this Adobe stuff on linux, my life would be so much easier.

Thanks for the guide, will try it out.

Before I embark on this, I have a question about the point where you move the installed application from the VM environment to the host application folder. Is this as simple as copying just the .app file?

Why I ask: I notice on my computers with Adobe software that the installation process creates folders in addition to the .app file itself. For example at ~/Library/Application Support. Can I just ignore these folders or do I need to be move these from the VM as well?

Thanks for your effort in this.