If you have installed Adobe Acrobat on Windows devices, you may receive regular notifications to make it the default PDF viewer on the system. This happens only if Adobe Acrobat is not set as the default PDF application on Windows.
Microsoft Edge is the default PDF viewer by default on Windows systems.
Tip: you can disable Rewrite with Copilot in Microsoft Edge to remove that annoying popup.
The notification reads: “Make Adobe Acrobat your default PDF app. Easily view, comment on PDFs, and more when you select Adobe Acrobat as your default viewer for PDF files.”.
Adobe’s support website has a support page about the prompt, or better, disabling the prompt. Problem is, it explains how this is done for an older version of the notification and only when launching Adobe Acrobat.
The actual Adobe Acrobat prompt has three main controls:
- Set as default — which starts the process of making Adobe Acrobat the default PDF viewer on the Windows system.
- The x-icon — which closes the notification.
- The three-dots-icon — to turn off all notifications for Adobe Acrobat or open the notifications settings of the operating system.
How to disable the Adobe Acrobat prompt
Apart from making Acrobat the default PDF viewer, your best option is to activate the three-dots icon and select turn off all notifications for Adobe Acrobat.
Note that Adobe suggests a different solution on the support page. The main difference is that Adobe’s provides a solution for the message when Adobe Acrobat is started, and not for the Windows notification.
Still, if you want to disable it as well, you may do so in the Windows Registry:
- Open the Start menu.
- Type regedit.exe and select Registry Editor.
- Confirm the UAC prompt that is shown.
- Go to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\AVAlert\cCheckbox.
- Double-click on iAppDoNotTakePDFOwnershipAtLaunchWin10.
- Set its value to 1.
Note: if iAppDoNotTakePDFOwnershipAtLaunchWin10 does not exist, right-click on cCheckbox and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value. Name it accordingly and set its value to 1.
Closing Words
You could also remove Adobe Acrobat, if you do not need it. On most systems, it is installed for a purpose though.
As always, I’ve yet to see the notification mentioned on my laptop running Windows 10. I have Adobe Acrobat installed, in fact it showed an icon in the taskbar this morning for updating to a new version, but no notification. And Edge isn’t used.
I installed FoxIt, which I rather like except for an annoying ad space in the upper right-hand corner [one learns to avoid the annoyance]. so maybe FoxIt has some way of intervening with the notification from Windows/Adobe.
Don’t know.
The site has a refreshing look compared to gHacks–not so busy, cluttered. I don’t think one needs an author profile on every story.
I like FoxIt also. I believe the app has a Preference setting that disables that ad in the upper-right corner of the FoxIt window. I recently turned it off and I haven’t seen an ad since. Unfortunately, I am still getting the Adobe reminder even though the registry key mentioned in this post has been set as instructed.
There isn’t any “trick” to make dissappear the bottom-left advertising with “Try Acrobat Pro” (or sometimes “Free7-day trial”?
Tried different sollutions – none of them working.
T.I.A.
Maybe something here:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-reader-discussions/how-to-remove-quot-advert-for-a-7-day-trial-of-acrobat-pro-quot/m-p/14102103
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-reader-discussions/how-to-remove-quot-convert-edit-and-e-sign-pdf-forms-amp-agreements-free-7-day-trial-quot-commercial/m-p/12562285#M86073
Thanks @VioletMoon!
Tried them all already (created the CIPM key, the bAcroSuppressUpsell key in the registry) – none worked with Reader DC v. 2024.002.20759.
Found a “surrogate” solution in closing the “All tools” sidebar – the small ad is disappearing because there’s no space in that column left for it 😛
Maybe a future update from Adobe will remove it completely.
For the exact notification banner in the first image in this article, this is what should work.
In the Windows Search (next to Start button, or top of Start menu), type “turn app notifications on or off” (no quotes). The full option will likely appear as a result after you’ve typed the first two words.
Scroll down to the section for “Notifications from apps and other senders” which has a “Sort by” option for Most Recent or Name. Locate Adobe Acrobat and select the item (not the On toggle) to get to all of the settings available.
My personal choice was to uncheck “Show notification banners” and switch the “Play a sound when a notification arrives” to Off.
I was inspired by the 2nd image to look for this, even though I didn’t have any option or 3 dots on the notification itself, so thank you!