The Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop app displays a "You don't have access to manage apps" message


You don't have access to manage apps. Permission from your IT administrator may be required to enable apps management.

  • To fix this, first sign out of the Creative Cloud Desktop app, then close the application.
  • On your machine, navigate to the ServiceConfig.xml file at the following location:
    • MacOS: Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Adobe/OOBE/Configs/ServiceConfig.xml
    • Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\OOBE\Configs\ServiceConfig.xml
      There may be more than one OOBE folder at other locations on your machine. Be sure to navigate to the correct one. This is the location of the correct Library folder on a Mac from which you would drill down to eventually get to the ServiceConfig.xml file:
      A view of the Mac directory structure described in the steps above
  • Open the ServiceConfig.xml file with TextEdit (Mac) or Notepad (Windows). Change this:
    • <panel><name>AppsPanel</name><visible>false</visible></panel>
      to this:
    • <panel><name>AppsPanel</name><visible>true</visible></panel>
    • Save ServiceConfig.xml to its original location
    • If the OS tells you that you don't have permissions to change the file...
      1. Copy ServiceConfig.xml to your desktop
      2. Open and make the above change
      3. Save to the desktop
      4. Rename the original ServiceConfig.xml in the Configs folder (to ServiceConfig-old.xml, for example)
      5. Copy and paste the altered copy from the desktop into the Configs folder
  •  Restart the computer.
  • After restarting and launching the Creative Cloud Desktop app, you should no longer get the "You don't have access to manage apps" error message.