Microsoft Office Software Windows

What is AcroTray? Should I get rid of it?

AcroTray
Acro aggro? Find out what this mysterious app does

If you’re the kind of obsessive who occasionally trawls through the apps that launch at Windows start-up, looking for wastrels to nix, you might have come across AcroTray.

It purports to come from Adobe and sounds suspiciously like one of the company’s other products, Acrobat. Is this some rogue piece of software that’s wheedled its way on to your computer or is there an innocent explanation?

What does AcroTray do?

Relax, AcroTray is harmless. It’s an Adobe plugin that helps you convert other document formats into PDF.

If you’re a Microsoft Office user, for example, and you have Adobe Acrobat installed on the same PC, you should see a toolbar in Word that allows you to create PDF documents.

AcroTray

AcroTray is the piece of software that looks after that.

You can prevent AcroTray from running at startup, but we wouldn’t recommend it. As you can see from our Task Manager grab here, it’s relatively harmless, consuming very little memory and sitting idle in the background until you press it into action.

AcroTray Task Manager

NOW READ THIS: What does the Windows key do?

About the author

Barry Collins

Barry has scribbled about tech for almost 20 years for The Sunday Times, PC Pro, WebUser, Which? and many others. He was once Deputy Editor of Mail Online and remains in therapy to this day. Email Barry at barry@bigtechquestion.com.

Add Comment

Click here to post a comment

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Discover more from The Big Tech Question

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading