Adobe Air on macOS: future version 27 comes without Rosetta

[LotharMZ-AM993]

We develop training programmes based on Adobe AIR for macOS and Windows.
With the latest Adobe AIR packages, released as AIR SDK 54.3.3.1, Rosetta is still required to run them on the current macOS 26.5.1.
From macOS 27 onwards, Rosetta is no longer expected to be supported. Is there a way to build Adobe AIR packages natively for Apple chips?

[ajwfrost]

The latest (51.3.3.1) build of the AIR shared runtime should be fully using the "universal binary" mechanism hence shouldn't require Rosetta - I did notice that it continued to use it if it had before, unless we forced it to run in arm64 mode. But this makes me think we should actually remove Rosetta and then make sure everything still works, in case we'd missed something!

There is a new feature for building .air files that includes the signed binaries/files that are needed for an application that's installed on macOS and running in arm64 mode: the Apple security is a lot tighter for this, so applications wouldn't start up for us if they are just normal .air files installed with the arm64 shared runtime. So if you build an .air file using the "air4mac" target type, and provide the developer ID signature information, it will create a .air file that has the extra files in it, and the 51.3.3+ runtimes will extract these so that your mac application looks like it was properly code-signed.

If you have any specific issues/errors, please let us know and we can look into it, in the meantime, we will try to do some further testing, and we also need to copy the documentation (from the release notes, summarised above) into the airsdk.dev website...

thanks

[LotharMZ-AM993]

Thank you very much for your prompt reply. However, there is another problem:

I have a Digicert Trusted Root G4 certificate on a SafeNet eToken 5110+ FIPS. The certificate is also displayed correctly on the Mac in the SafeNet Authentication Client.

However, I cannot link the certificate in the publishing settings in Adobe Animate 24.0.13, as only .p12 and .pfc files are permitted there.

We resolved the issue with the help of DigiCert support: I publish my programme as an .airi file and convert this to an .air file on a Windows PC using the Command Prompt. This allows me to bind the certificate to the eToken.

However, the programme installed on the Mac via the Adobe AIR package only works if Rosetta is enabled.

[ajwfrost]

We can look at this, it may be relatively simple to add in a mechanism where an existing .air file can be modified to include the macOS code-signature details. Just checking, is that DigiCert step something that can be done on a mac as well? it might simplify the whole process if so...

FYI, we had also adjusted the .air format to allow it to support JAR-signing which should have then helped with the use of tools such as these. But, I'm not 100% sure whether a file that's signed via the jarsigner mechanism would then also work with the macOS code-signature format. Will have to check on this too!

thanks

[LotharMZ-AM993]

Unfortunately, converting the .airi document into an .air package does not work on macOS. We had tried this before, but even Digicert Support was unable to resolve the issue.

Here is the command we used:

adt -sign -storetype PKCS11 -keystore NONE -alias „User Name“ -providerClass sun.security.pkcs11.SunPKCS11 -providerArg „C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-17\bin\eToken.cfg“ -tsa http://timestamp.digicert.com „C:\Users\username\Desktop\feedback.airi“ „C:\Users\username\Desktop\feedback.air“

On macOS, the hardware token is recognised as a SmartCard, but cannot be linked even when the correct eToken password is entered as PIN. I had hoped to be able to access the signature directly via Animate’s publishing settings. This was possible with .p12 certificates, but that format is no longer available for security reasons.

I’m a graphic designer, so unfortunately not an IT specialist, and I’m not very familiar with Java or the command prompt. I’m actually just an Adobe Animate user, and I’m facing the problem that the interaction between Harman, Adobe and Apple no longer works as smoothly as it once did.

The issue isn’t urgent at the moment, as Rosetta will remain available up to and including macOS version 27 (announced for October 2026). However, a solution should be available from macOS 28 onwards.