Why does Adobe Acrobat use so much memory and run so many background services?

A lot of the extra resource usage comes from how Adobe bundles its applications and services. You can limit startup items and turn off features you never use, but completely removing every background component may cause updates, cloud functions, or licensing checks to stop working. For a full document-management workflow, some of that overhead is expected.

Acrobat can use a fair amount of RAM, particularly when Creative Cloud and its related services are installed. The background processes usually handle updates, licensing, synchronization, collaboration, or cloud features, so they may not indicate that Acrobat is actively processing a document. If you don’t use Creative Cloud or cloud-sync tools, check Task Manager’s Startup apps section and disable Adobe items you don’t need. You can also review Acrobat’s settings for cloud, collaboration, and background features. I’d leave the licensing service enabled, since disabling it could interfere with subscription verification.

If you’re only reading PDFs, a lighter PDF viewer may be a better fit. However, your workflow includes scan cleanup, document merging, editing, sending files, and electronic signatures, so Acrobat’s larger footprint is partly the trade-off for having all those tools in one package.