Creative Cloud Desktop displays “compatible app required”

Zürg 3 Plugin should be correctly recognised by Adobe Photoshop® CC 2022 (23.5) or later.

Please check that CCD actually shows Photoshop as installed. There is a known bug where PS may be installed, but the Adobe installer does not recognise it. If that is the case, just click to install PS. This should show it again in the installer, and then you’ll be able to install any Photoshop Plugin.

Please see Adobe’s support site for more info about this.

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Panel shows as installed in the Adobe installer, but does not show in Photoshop under the Plugins menu

Adobe does not support installations where Photoshop or the user account is not on the boot drive. If you do this, your plugins will not work.

If Windows Defender or other anti-virus false positive blocks/quarantines files, this may result in the panel not showing in PS.

If you have Apple Silicon and launch PS under Rosetta, this may break some panels due to an Adobe bug where Intel binaries are not installed and the native binaries are not used. To resolve this, just launch PS natively without Rosetta.

UXP Plugins are not supported under the ARM version of Windows.

The “UXPLogs…….log” files for Photoshop may found in:

Windows
C:\Users\{your_username}\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 20XX\Logs\pslog_######_######.log

MacOS
/Users/{your_username}/Library/Logs/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop 20XXpslog_######_######.log

If you wish to review the details yourself, lines in the log file including “plugin“, “addon“, or “upic::” are likely to refer to UXP plugins.

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“Creative Cloud cannot open files of this type.” or “Could not complete your request because Photoshop does not recognize this type of file”

DO NOT try to open the CCX file via “open with” or choosing a different app to open the CCX file.

If the Adobe installer is properly installed, the correct helper app (UPIA) should automatically start when you double-click on the .CCX file (ie, don’t try to outsmart the system).

This may indicate that you do not have the Creative Cloud Desktop app installed. If you have an original Photoshop CC installation, you should definitely have it.

This may also indicate that the CCX file extension is not pointing to the correct Adobe app. While the app you see during the plugins installation is the Creative Cloud Desktop app, installing the CCX file actually goes through a helper app called Unified Plugin Installer Agent (UPIA), so please make sure that your operating system is pointing to this app:

Windows
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe Desktop Common\RemoteComponents\UPI\UnifiedPluginInstallerAgent\UnifiedPluginInstallerAgent

MacOS
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Desktop Common/RemoteComponents/UPI/UnifiedPluginInstallerAgent/UnifiedPluginInstallerAgent

On MacOS this will likely be a hidden folder on your system, but you can use the CMD + SHIFT + PERIOD keyboard shortcut to see hidden files if needed

You should also be able to drag a .CCX file onto the UnifiedPluginInstallerAgent to install it, but updating the file association to run by default should fix things long term.

To change file association in MacOS, right click the .CCX file, change the “open with” to UPIA and then click “change all” so that all CCX files will use it (otherwise just that single CCX file will use it and future updates or other panels will not).

If you’re still having trouble, please contact Adobe Support to help you understand why your system will not install a valid CCX.