Hi! I download your newest Photoshop 2024 two nights ago, and it's saying there is only a 5 day grace period before it uninstalls itself if I don't license it. I thought this was meant to be free, so did something happen when the file was created or did I misunderstand what is going on with this?
Hi there!! My apologies for posting this publicly, instead of answering you privately, but I just want to be able to make sure that if anyone else runs into this issue, that they easily have access to the fix. Now, this hasn't happened to me at present after numerous days of consistent use, nor have I heard of anyone else running into it, but I am aware that it can happen, but the fix is actually quite simple (I had to do this for a previous version). Okay, this involves a little bit of navigating and tinkering in Windows, but I'll run you through it, don't worry.
In essence what happened is that Photoshop was able to connect to the Adobe servers, where it verified itself through an automated process, and realized it wasn't quite activated yet. This is nothing concerning, and is something that us little pirates have had to deal with for years without any issue at the backhand. So the simple, very old, and private solution to this is to not let Photoshop connect to the internet at all (this will not limit it in any way), and accomplishing that is simple enough. Before you go through these steps however, please uninstall Photoshop, and reinstall it (ideally in a slightly different location, even if it's in a subfolder.) After that, here, let me run you through the steps!
Step 1. Do a search for 'Windows Defender', and click 'Windows Defender Firewall' when it pops up as a search result. When the window pops up, navigate to the left-hand side and select 'Advanced settings', like below:

















