How to run InDesign on modern Macs or other Windows Arm machines

Question

Adobe CC does not allow installing Indesign on Windows Arm. Surprisingly, however, it seems to run just fine. Here are the steps I went through to run it. I used a free trial of a program called Total Uninstall from https://www.martau.com/ and some manual editing of files exported from RegEdit. A paid version of Total Uninstall should make this process easier by avoiding RegEdit completely. 

Warning: I've done this, and Publishing Assistant and Indesign seem to work fine afterwards, but I have not used this for any real work, so you may discover some incompatibility that was the reason why Adobe restricts InDesign from installing on Arm.

Borrow a PC running Windows x64 with an Intel or AMD processor:

1. Install the Adobe Creative Cloud app from https://creativecloud.adobe.com/apps/download/creative-cloud
2. Sign into Adobe Creative Cloud, and install the Creative Cloud app itself, but DO NOT install Indesign yet.
3. Download and install a trial of the Professional version of an app called Total Uninstall from https://www.martau.com/.
4. Launch Total Uninstall and click on the Install icon on the toolbar.
   • Click Next to create a "pre-install system snapshot".
   • Install Indesign from the Adobe Creative Cloud app.
   • When Indesign is fully installed, return to the "Monitor new installation" dialog box. Type "Adobe Indesign" into the Program name box then click Program is installed.
   • Click Finish
5. Click to select "Adobe Indesign" in the list of program names on the left side of the Total Uninstall software.
6. From the File menu, select Create a backup for the program…
   • Click Create.
   • Total Uninstaller will begin collecting all of the files installed for Indesign and compressing them into a ZIP file. This process could take 5-10 minutes on a slower computer.
   • When the backup is created, click Copy to… and specify a folder or USB drive in which to save the ~1.5 GB ZIP file containing Indesign and all of the files it spread out over the C: drive.
   • Click Finish and then exit Total Uninstall.
7. On the right side of the screen, click [-] to collapse the File system tree, then right click on Registry and select Export registry changes…
   • Export range: All
   • Registry changes: check all five boxes
   • Export type: Install file
   • Click OK.
   • Pay Money! Or export the listed registry keys manually using RegEdit.exe

On your Windows Arm PC:

I'm doing this on a MacBook Air with an M2 processor running Windows Arm in Parallels Desktop. I think it should work just as well on any computer or VM running any 64-bit version of Windows (x64 or Arm) that can run Indesign.

1. Install the Adobe Creative Cloud app from https://creativecloud.adobe.com/apps/download/creative-cloud
2. Sign into Adobe Creative Cloud, and install the Creative Cloud app itself, but DO NOT install Indesign yet.
3. Download and install a Purchased version of Total Uninstall, then click Restore a program from backup from the File menu. Or do it manually following the steps below.
4. Use 7-Zip to uncompress the Adobe Indesign.Monitored.zip file to a temporary folder. (Windows Explorer's built-in zip utility is unable to see most of the files in this ZIP file.)
5. Copy the files to where they should go on your C: drive.
6. Import the registry entries which you previously exported using RegEdit and then laboriously pruned using Notepad.
7. Publishing Assistant should now be able to find and launch Indesign.

Answer 1

For information only - no response needed