Acrobat and macOS 10.15 Catalina compatibility

Acrobat DC, Acrobat 2017, and Acrobat 2015 are compatible with the new macOS 10.15 Catalina. Major changes in user experience and known issues are described in this document.

• Acrobat 2015: If you download Classic 2015 Acrobat or Reader patches from the release notes or the FTP site, you see a notarization prompt and the installation is blocked. It's general behavior for all installer packages downloaded using a browser and not from the Mac App Store. To begin the installation, right-click the installer and choose Open.

• A permission prompt appears on the upper-right corner. Click Allow to enable notifications.

• Recent: An OS permission prompt is shown if you open files from Recents, which were added in Recents before you upgraded to Catalina.
  

• Thumbnails of files in Recent and other areas: Thumbnails appear for those files for which Acrobat has read permission.
  

• Thumbnails of files in the landing pages of tools: The thumbnail is displayed only if Acrobat has read permission on the folder in which the file is located.
  

• Create PDF from Acrobat ribbon in Word and PowerPoint: An OS permission prompt is shown.
  

• PostScript to PDF conversion: An OS permission prompt for Acrobat is shown. 
  

• Screen capture to PDF: A permission prompt is shown.

• Tools > Combine: For Microsoft Office files, when you add or convert an Office file for the first time, an OS permission prompt is shown. This experience is similar to macOS 10.14 Mojave.

• Select files from Recent files list and Combine: For each selected file, an OS permission prompt is displayed.

Network folder-based review initiation: A permission prompt is shown. Click OK to allow access to files on the network volume.  

Adobe is trying to fix the following known issues in a future release.

• Creating multiple PDF files does not work if users don't Allow once on the OS File permissions prompt. [4286131]

• The PDF icon in the title bar of Acrobat used to open folder location is now removed in Catalina. [4279798]
  
  Workaround:
  Create a FeatureState plist file with a key showTitleBarIcon, and set its value to True.
  
  Location of plist file: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/(Acrobat or Reader)/(version)/Preferences/com.adobe.(Acrobat/Reader).FeatureState.plist
  For example, for Acrobat DC, the location is: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/DC/Preferences/com.adobe.acrobat.FeatureState.plist
  
  Note: macOS may display a permission prompt for Acrobat seeking access to some specific folders when you enable this FeatureState key.