OS X Catalina 10.15.5 - All adobe air apps display blank screen

[blackeyeliner]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to run an Adobe AIR application on my machine (MacBook Pro, OS X Catalina 10.15.5) and it displays a blank screen - it's either black, or contains parts of background and otherwise behaves in a weird way. Application itself works functionally (it's a Boss MS-3 Librarian control app, and clicking anywhere in the screen actually does affect the device, so it works, but does not display anything).

Weirdly if I try to drag something out of the window, it briefly displays parts of the interface (such as a button that I tried to drag out). There is something very wrong going on with drawing on the screen.

First I thought the application is broken, but then I downloaded Adobe AIR runtime installer, and the installer behaves *exact same way* - displays a blank image which is either black or contains parts of background underneath. That makes me think this is not a Boss application problem, but an Air problem.

Any ideas why Air would fail totally on my machine? How to troubleshoot?

[blackeyeliner]

Any ideas?

[Flipline]

Unfortunately I don't think Adobe has ever updated the AIR runtime to be compatible with Catalina, there's either an issue with 64-bit compatibility or app signing (or both).

App developers can choose to create an application that has the AIR runtime bundled and built-in (instead of requiring a separate download), and those CAN in theory be made to work on Catalina, but if they're relying on Adobe's separate download of Adobe AIR unfortunately that likely won't function on Catalina.

[blackeyeliner]

Thanks for your reply. It's at least something.

Re Adobe never updating AIR runtime to Catalina - WOW. Just wow.

Re bundling - that's exactly what puzzles me. I have another Mac on Catalina (a previous generation Mac Mini), and it's also 10.15, but MS-3 application works on it perfectly well. The application itself bundles Air runtime within. What I find interesting is that on my MacBook Pro downloadable Adobe runtime fails with exact same symptoms - blank screen, doesn't draw.

I guess I will have to try to install a fresh Catalina on my MBP and try it again, but what a bummer that would be if it won't work even then.