So let's say you suspect that you have adware on your Mac.
Adware is not as serious as some malware.
It's not really stealing your information or doing harm to your computer but it's showing
you ads everywhere and it's annoying and you shouldn't have it on your Mac.
Of course the way to avoid that is to make sure you only download software from sites
you trust and to research software before you download it.
But once you have it you want to get rid of it.
You can look in some general places and do some general things that will get rid of most
kinds of adware.
If you can identify the kind of adware you've got the best thing to do is to goggle that
with the keywords Mac, remove, and the name of the adware.
Usually you'll come up with some site that gives you instructions.
As a matter of fact it's best to look at several sites that give you instructions and see that
they all agree before actually doing those things.
But let's say you want to go and check in the usual places and try to clean up your
Mac a little bit.
So the first thing you want to do, is you want to make sure you quit any apps that you're
running, especially Safari.
So you quit that and you're out of all your apps.
Now you're just going to be in the Finder here looking at your files.
You're going to use the Go menu to go into your Library.
Now you click on Go and there is no Library entry there.
But if you hold the Option key down on your keyboard Library pops up, you select it, and
now you're in your Library.
In your Home folder.
I'm going to choose Column view here so I can see things a little easier.
So I can see I'm in Library and here are the folders in Library.
One of them is something called LaunchAgents.
So you're going to look in here.
I'm going to expand this column a bit so I can see these things.
Now you want to look and see what's in there and try to see if you can identify each item.
So, for instance, here's one that obviously Spotify.
If you have Spotify installed, it's there, no problem.
Skype, the same thing.
DropBox, the same thing.
There's some form of Adobe.
I use lots of Adobe software so I'm not surprised.
I know that GC is a kind of software to make sure I have a license to Adobe software on
there.
So all four of these checkout.
I know what they are.
If you don't know what something is you can always copy the file name and do a Goggle
search on it.
Usually you'll come up with somebody that has asked a question before and they say,
oh that's for Microsoft or whatever.
So you say, yes I have that software so I know that's legitimate.
But if you see the name of some adware or something you don't recognize then that may
be the culprit and you may want to delete that.
Now also look, in addition to LaunchAgents, look for something called LaunchDaemons.
That's kind of also another place where things that automatically get launched startup are
stored.
In addition to your User folder here you want to check the computer's system libraries.
There are two libraries.
There's the system library which is for all users and there's the User Library which is
just for your user account.
I'm going to Command click here on the top title bar here so I can go all the way back
up to the hard drive level.
In the hard drive level I can see the System Library and I can go and see there is LaunchAgents.
I can expand this column here as well and check out all of these things to make sure
they check out.
I can look at LaunchDaemons as well and check all these out as well.
I know what each one of these it.
There's some stuff from Microsoft.
There's my screen recording software.
There's a bunch things for Adobe.
Backup software.
All things that I understand.
But if you see the adware that you're trying to get rid of listed here or something you
don't recognize then search for it and see if it's something you should delete.
So that's your first step.
The next thing you'll want to do is go to System Preferences.
In there go to User & Groups.
Your user there should already be selected.
So click on the padlock to authenticate.
Go to Login Items.
In here you'll see some apps that will automatically startup when you login.
So make sure you can identify everything in there.
If not search for it or if it's obviously the adware you're trying to get rid of you
can select it and use the minus button here to delete it.
Now it's time to look in Safari again.
But instead of just launching Safari by clicking on Safari you're going to hold the Shift key
down as you do so.
What this does is any windows that you had opened in the previous session of Safari will
not reopen.
So if something is kind of in a hidden window somewhere it's going to be eliminated.
So now back in Safari and you want to go to Safari Preferences.
In Safari Preferences there's a couple things you want to check.
First Extensions.
Go to Extensions here and it shows you list of extensions.
This is a place where sometimes if you had adware installed it's going to be installed
as a Safari extension.
So you look through here and you make sure you identify everything.
Here's the DuckDuckGo privacy extension.
I did a tutorial on that a little while ago which is why it's installed.
I remember installing it.
I know why it's there.
I'm good.
But if you look at the other things here you may find something there that you don't know
what it is.
You can search for it or maybe you find the thing that's obviously adware and you can
select it and delete it.
Don't just deactivate it.
Actually just uninstall it with this Uninstall button right here.
Also, you can go in the General tab and there's Homepage here.
Sometimes what adware does is it changes the Homepage on your browser.
So even after you've uninstalled it completely you notice that whenever you open up a new
browser window it goes to some weird search engine or some ad or something like that.
So check what's here.
I have it set to wikipedia from a previous tutorial but you may have it set to nothing,
or to Goggle, or something like that.
Just make sure that's something you want there as your Homepage.
One last general piece of advice.
You may want to just, at this point, do an Applications audit on your Mac.
So, in the Finder, open a New Finder Window, and you can click on Applications on the sidebar
there or go to Applications.
Look through all of the applications you see that you have installed.
Just do it one by one.
Take your time.
Almost all of these, and probably all of them, are going to be just fine.
You'll recognize them as something you've installed or something that should be there.
If there's something you don't recognize, again, Goggle it, see what it is.
Just don't blindly delete something that you're unsure about because a lot of things in here
that may not have the name you expect or you may not have realize they're on your Mac.
But if you see something that's obviously the piece of adware you're dealing with then
you're going to want to clean it out of your Applications folder even if it's not set to
launch automatically or do anything like that.
You don't want it on your Mac.
It's a good idea to just do an audit and look through them.
I've got, you can see, 154 items here.
It wouldn't take me that long to get through them.
I'm a pro user that's been adding apps, and I have lots of apps for development and for
video editing, for all sorts of things in here.
So you probably have even less.
Most of these will be things you recognize.
There's iMovie, there's Word, there's Pixelmator, Acorn.
All the stuff that you probably recognize right at a glance.
So it will be quick to go through this and see what, maybe, shouldn't be there.