Participant

Answered

How do I disable a pop up in Acrobat which says “ Share your PDFs using WhatsApp?”

Forum|Forum|1 month ago
June 11, 2026
11 replies
1887 views

This pop up window appears everytime I open Acrobat Reader and no matter what options I have tried turning off after numerous Google searchs, it still persists.

Please tell me how to stop this happening as it’s incredibly annoying!

Thanks

Correct answer AcroGuest111

I started getting this problem too.

Have you tried the following (from Chris Tettamanti a year ago). It worked for me:

1) Close out all instances of Acrobat

2) Right-click on the icon for Acrobat on your desktop

3) Click on "Properties" (it may be under "show more options")

4) Click on the "Compatibility" tab

5) Uncheck the "Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows 8" box in "Compatibility mode"

6) Click "ok" at the bottom

7) Go back to a PDF file and click on "Edit > Preferences > General > Uncheck the Show me messages when I launch Adobe Acrobat

😎 Click "ok" at the bottom

Basically, you need to uncheck the compatibility box, and then uncheck the “messages from Adobe” button again.

Meenakshi0101

Community Manager

Hi All,

Thank you for your patience so far.

The preference settings only disable the Send to WhatsApp button in the application. However, you may disable the Send text to WhatsApp option from the pop-up by using the following feature lockdown key:

bEnableThirdPartyWhatsappShare -0

Let us know if that helps.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

V

VMN-A

Hello,

Can you please at least specify where this key has to be created in regedit ?

Thanks

Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @VMN-A

I hope you are doing well, and sorry for the trouble you had.

The path is:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\Beta\FeatureLockDown

Please note that the version details highlighted will be different on your computer. Add the feature lockdown key: bEnableThirdPartyWhatsappShare and the value will be 0.

I have also sent you an email with more details. Please check your email.

Let us know how it goes, and please reach out if you need any assistance.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

roguevoice

Participant

I’m on a Mac and have the exact same problem. Just started this week. I have always had Generative AI features disabled. I also double checked and, “Show Send to WhatsApp Shortcut” is also disabled. I’m also in Classic view because I hate the New Acrobat layout.

K

kittystorms

Participant

This is so fricking annoying. It’s like Adobe is going out of their way to kill what little goodwill remains with their customers.

F

fire_frog

Participating Frequently

Same here. Impossible to get rid of this stupidity. It’s almost as if Adobe is actively TRYING to annoy the sh!t out of their customers. If I wasn’t forced by my employer to use it, I’d kick this sorry excuse of a PDF reader down the curb in an instant.

Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @fire_frog

I hope you are doing well, and we’re sorry for the trouble you had.

We’re getting this investigated internally, and we may reach out to you if we need any additional details.

Thanks for your cooperation on this.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

V

VMN-A

This is horrible.
Even unchecking the Preferences / General / “show send through whatsapp” (I’m translating it from french) doesn’t help. This program is too expensive to have a whatsapp commercial every time we higlight text.

Meenakshi0101

Community Manager

Hi VMN-A,

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry for the trouble caused.

As you mentioned, the pop-up continues to appear even after disabling the option in the preferences. Could you please provide a short video demonstrating the changes you've made in the application and what happens when you highlight the text?

Additionally, please share the version of Acrobat and the operating system you are using on your machine.

Let us know if you have any questions or need help.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

V

VMN-A

Please find it attached the video.

I’m using Adobe 2026.001.21691 Adobe Acrobat Pro.

IMG_1421-2.mp4

B

BlackA

Participant

This does not fix the issue. When I highlight text, share with Whats App pops up and I HATE it!

Henri Pellemans

Participating Frequently

Since a few days, if I want to highlight text, there is this new ‘share text with WhatsApp. This is very unwanted and distracts me from my work. The ‘solutions’ above don't work for me. I have Acrobat Pro 64-bit.

C

Corinna34440367ti8j

Participant

The fix for this has nothing to do with checking/unchecking your current preferences. You can revert to the older ‘Classic’* but that’s not a proper fix. Here’s what you can do if you’re on a Mac and are experiencing this particular pop-up error:

Quit Acrobat.
Go to ~/Library/Preferences. This is a hidden folder, so to find it go to: Finder > Go > Go to folder, and paste it in exactly as I put it in red.
In there, search ‘Acrobat’, hit return, then move all Acrobat-specific preference files and folders to a backup folder. I called mine ‘Adobe Preference Backup’ and saved this backup folder to my desktop.
Restart Acrobat.
Allow Acrobat to recreate fresh preferences.

This should (hopefully) result in no more highly irritating ‘share pdfs to WhatsApp’ pop-ups!

*If you do prefer to just revert to ‘Classic’, this is super simple:

Open Acrobat
Click ‘View’ in the top menu
Select ‘Disable new Acrobat’

This will work, but you lose all the newer features.

A

AcroGuest111Correct answer

Participant

I started getting this problem too.

Have you tried the following (from Chris Tettamanti a year ago). It worked for me:

1) Close out all instances of Acrobat

2) Right-click on the icon for Acrobat on your desktop

3) Click on "Properties" (it may be under "show more options")

4) Click on the "Compatibility" tab

5) Uncheck the "Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows 8" box in "Compatibility mode"

6) Click "ok" at the bottom

7) Go back to a PDF file and click on "Edit > Preferences > General > Uncheck the Show me messages when I launch Adobe Acrobat

😎 Click "ok" at the bottom

Basically, you need to uncheck the compatibility box, and then uncheck the “messages from Adobe” button again.

Empress+LondonAuthor

Participant

Thanks for the response but I stupidly forgot to mention that I am using MacOS so this solution isn’t going to work. Would you be aware of a solution for MacOS?

A

AcroGuest111

Participant

Sorry, I don’t use Macs at work. Have you already done this:

While still in Preferences, click on Generative AI on the left.

Uncheck all boxes (such as "Enable Generative AI features in Acrobat"), and click OK.

Go back into Preferences, select Documents.

Look for and uncheck any features labeled "Quick Actions", "Share PDFs with...", or "Contextual Help" to ensure you aren't interrupted while clicking around documents.

If you have and it didn’t help, and you really want to get rid of the pop ups (and who wouldn't; they’re incredibly annoying), possibly try a 3rd party app like Lulu (https://objective-see.org/products/lulu.html). I haven’t tried it myself, but I probably would if nothing else worked.