Disable Adobe CS4/5 internet access and update downloads for service extensions

Adobe Creative Suite (CS) will automatically connect to the internet and attempt to initiate connections with Adobe Online Services and Service Update, this will happen regardless of you disabling the updates within the Adobe preferences for some reason. If you want to turn off the ability for Adobe CS to access the online services, kuler extensions, Adobe ConnectNow, Service Manager, and online help, this is how to do it. The instructions work for Adobe CS4 and CS5.

Note: this does NOT effect the ability for you to update the Adobe CS updates from the Help menu, although you may be able to do that as well by customizing the plists. This also does NOT effect the standard Adobe application updates or the apps from attempting to contact Adobe otherwise, those can be adjusted in the preferences of each Adobe application.

Stop Adobe CS from accessing the internet with service extensions

Adobe was kind enough to provide some sample plist files if you don’t want to muck around in the depths of editing plists yourself, you can get those directly from Adobe here.

Once you download those plist files, unzip them and you can just drop them over:
/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.AdobeOnlineHelp.plist
and
/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.CSXSPreferences.plist
Of course, it is highly recommended to backup these two files first in case you want to restore the functionality in the future.

Now if you are curious what’s going on, here are the full instructions on editing the plist files and what’s going on, directly from Adobe. It’s not particularly easy just because editing plists isn’t common knowledge for most Mac users, but follow the directions and you should be able to figure it out. Again, the easy method is just to swap out the plist files as stated above.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 offers a number of services that connect to the internet to provide enhanced functionality. These services can also download updates automatically. In certain circumstances system administrators may wish to disable these connections and updated downloads. The document lists the changes that have to be made to the registry (Windows XP/Vista) or preference files (Mac OS X) to disable these network activities. This applies to the following Creative Suite 4 services:

* Kuler (Extensions > Kuler)
* Adobe ConnectNow (File > Share my Screen)
* Service Manager (Extensions > Connections)
* Search for Help (Search field in the app bar)
* Help > [Product Name] Help

Deactivate the Adobe Online Services and Service Update preferences at a system level.

The following data values need to be set to deactivate the Adobe Online Services and Service Update preferences at a system level. When these connections are disabled at the system level, it will override the users ability to enable connections or updates through the user interface. Disabling the online access for Search for Help will cause this feature and the Help > [Product Name] Help command to return results from .html help files installed on the local hard drive.

On Mac these keys can be found in a file in the following Property List (.plist) files:

/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.AdobeOnlineHelp.plist
AdobeOnlineDefault; controls online connects for Search for Help and Help > [Product Name] Help
/Library/Preferences/com.adobe.CSXSPreferences.plist
AdobeOnlineDefault; controls online connections for the other services
UpdatesAllowed; controls download of updates to these service extensions

Do the following:

* Open the Apple Property List Editor (supplied with the Apple SKD) or other property list editor application.
* Open /Library/Preferences/com.adobe.CSXSPreferences.plist.
* Select Root to see the sub-entries.
* Change the value of the key AdobeOnlineDefault to “0” to disable.
* Change the value of the key U pdatesAllowed to “0” to disable.
* Open /Library/Preferences/com.adobe.AdobeOnlineHelp.plist.
* Select Root to see the subentries.
* Change the value of the key AdobeOnlineDefault to “0” to disable.
* Save the .plist file.
* Restart the Adobe application.

If any of these keys do not exist, then complete the following steps:

* Select the Root object in the applicable plist file and click the triangle to display it’s contents.
* Click the New Child button and name it “AdobeOnlineDefault” or “UpdatesAllowed” as apprpriate.
* For Class select String.
* Set the value to “0” to disable.
* Save the .plist file.
* Restart the Adobe application.

You can see the original source of the above quoted text at Adobe Knowledge Base