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Known Participant
October 31, 2025
Open for Voting

How do I shut down Creative Cloud Desktop?

How do I shut down Creative Cloud Desktop in Windows 11? Internet searches produce nothing useful. This app is a memory hog that I don't want running in the background. AI search says right-click on the Show Hidden Icons menu and choose Quit or Exit, but doing so does nothing. No exit option appears. I see so many users looking for a solution to this ridiculous omission by Adobe.

6 replies

Participant
October 14, 2026

Yeah I’m having the same issue. Anyone else found a solution? I tried to do the “Ctrl + Q” thing the community manager in the comments mentioned but it did nothing. Adobe definitely trying to spy on us now. So weird there’s no “quit” or “close” button when you right click it on the icon pop up. I’ll try using the task manager and just execute the adobe program, hopefully that’ll force it to shut down. 

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Participant
October 14, 2026

Okay yeah, you can just open task manager while creative cloud is open and “end task”. The icon disappears from the bottom right pop-up.

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Kalvyn Rasquinha
Community Manager
Community Manager
October 31, 2025

Hi @mcbarker69 . On Windows, you should be able to quit the app using Ctrl + Q. There should also be a menu option at the top left of the app. I'm on macOS otherwise I would've attached a screenshot for you.

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kglad
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2025

you can do that using task manager. there have also been people here that created executables that shut down the adobe processes.

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Known Participant
October 31, 2025

That's not what I'm seeking. I should be able to manually shut down the app by right-clicking the icon and choosing Exit or Quit. There are no right-click options for this app's icon. I've NEVER had a program installed which didn't give that option before. I don't even use the cloud service, but it starts as soon as I open Photoshop, and I should be able to close it down after closing Photoshop. Instead, it continues to run in the background hogging way too much memory.

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kglad
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2025

there's no auto setting, if that's what you're seeking.

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