TimeSync Adobe Air Fix for macOS Catalina

If you’ve recently updated your Mac to macOS Catalina, you might have realized that the TimeSync app stopped working. That’s because macOS Catalina no longer supports 32-bit applications.

TimeSync runs on Adobe AIR and there are 32-bit components that Adobe AIR uses. These are automatically quarantined by macOS Catalina, rendering all Adobe AIR run-times impossible.

You might run into an error message like this:

And if you’ve tried reinstalling Adobe AIR, you might run into an error message like this:

But don’t worry – we’ve figured out a way to get around this. It’s not the simplest process, but it does work. If you’re not too comfortable using Terminal, you can always access the TimeSync on a Windows machine or a different Mac running an older macOS.

We’re going to try to make this as simple as possible, though. We just need to remove the quattined file that is located in a bit of a tricky place. We are sharing the following two step by step methods to get there and then finally remove the quarantined bits.

Method 1: Using Finder

Step 1: Open Finder

You can open Finder from the Dock – it’s this little icon you’re probably familiar with:

Step 2: Navigate to Frameworks

Use the “Go” option in the menu. Click on “Go to Folder”. In the dropdown menu, type in /Library/Frameworks

Press “Enter”/”Return” or click “Go”. This will navigate you to the appropriate file we want to work with.

Step 3: Open Frameworks in Terminal

Right-click on the Frameworks folder. Hover your mouse over the “Services” option, and then click on “New Terminal at Folder”:

This should open a new Terminal window that will automatically have you navigated to the correct place. It should look something like this:

Great job! Now skip down to the section below titled “Final Step: Remove Quarantined Bits”.

Method 2: Using Terminal

Step 1: Open Terminal

The easiest way to do this is to type “Terminal” into your Spotlight Search (this is the magnifying glass in the top-right corner of your screen):

Hit “Enter”/”Return” to open Terminal.

Step 2: Navigate to Frameworks

You should see something like this:

From there, you can start typing. If you type in cd /Library/Frameworks (and press “Return”), you’ll be navigating to the Frameworks folder in the Library of your root directory. This is where you want to be in order to get to the Adobe AIR framework.

Once you do that, type in ls (that’s a lower-case L) and press “Return”. That should display the folders that are now accessible.

You should see Adobe AIR.framework. Now you’re ready to move onto the final step.

Final Step: Remove Quarantine Bits

Use the ls command here (if you haven’t already) to display the folders in the Frameworks directory. You should see the Adobe AIR.framework file listed there. That’s our culprit.

From here use the command xattr -d com.apple.quarantine “Adobe AIR.framework”. These are the quarantined bits that we’ll need to remove in order to get the TimeSync working again.

If you get a line saying that access was denied, use the command sudo xattr -d com.apple.quarantine “Adobe AIR.framework”. Enter your password when prompted and press “Return”.

Now those quarantined bits should be deleted.

From there, you should be good to go! Try opening the TimeSync now.