Start with the date and time
The loop began after a battery replacement, a long shutdown, travel across time zones, or a new install.
Sign-in proof is time-limited on purpose. If the Mac's clock is off by enough, valid proof reads as expired the moment it is checked, and you are sent back to sign in.
Fixin System Settings, open General, then Date & Time, and turn on setting the time automatically. Confirm the time zone is right as well as the clock.
This is first because it is quick, it is common after hardware service, and every other step is wasted while it is wrong.
Rule out the network
It loops on one network — an office, a school, a VPN — and behaves on another, such as a phone hotspot.
Staying signed in requires reaching Adobe's servers periodically. A VPN, a company filter, or a security tool that inspects traffic can block or redirect that without blocking anything else you would notice.
Fixtest on a different network. If a hotspot holds the sign-in and the usual network does not, the fault is the network's handling of Adobe's traffic, not the Mac.
That is worth establishing before removing anything, because it means nothing on the Mac needs changing at all.
Clear the saved Adobe password
It loops on every network, including a hotspot, and has done since an update or a migration.
Your Mac stores app passwords in Keychain, the built-in password store. Creative Cloud saves its sign-in there and reads it back at every launch. If that entry is damaged — which migrations and interrupted updates can do — it is read and rejected every time.
Fixquit every Adobe app, open Keychain Access, and delete only these four entries: Adobe Intermediate CA, Adobe Content, Adobe User OS Info and Adobe User Info. They are recreated the next time you sign in successfully.
Delete those four by name rather than searching for adobe. A search also matches any adobe.com website password Safari saved for you. That is not part of this, and you would have to type it again.
Why the order matters
Adobe's own guidance includes signing out everywhere and reinstalling the Creative Cloud desktop app. Both work, and both are slow.
They also fix nothing if the clock is wrong or the network is blocking the check — the loop returns on the next launch, having cost an hour. Do them last, after the three checks above have ruled out the cheap causes.
What Noah can determine on this Mac
NoahNoah can check whether this Mac actually reaches Adobe's servers. It reads the network settings in effect rather than the ones configured, and looks through recent logs for the sign-in failing the same way each time. That separates a network cause from a local one.
Noah does not read your Keychain or change your clock. Password stores are on its permanent refuse list, beside system files and login keys, so those two steps stay yours to make. Noah can tell you whether the evidence points at them.
The short version
- Signing in again will not help — the sign-in is working, and what follows it is not.
- Check the clock first. It is the fastest cause and the most common after hardware service.
- Loops on one network but not a hotspot: the network is blocking the check.
- Loops everywhere: the saved Adobe password on this Mac is the suspect.
- Sign out everywhere and reinstall last, not first.