Unwanted Extensions.

by rotebaron Feb 13, 2011 11:33PM PST

A few months ago I opened up Safari to find that my tool bar had changed. I had shortly before downloaded a Safari upgrade from Apple, so I assumed this change was related to that, but I can not be sure.

On my tool bar, in a line below the main address field, and above my line of bookmark tabs, is a growing proliferation of icons.

Speaking to a more advanced Mac user, he suggested these are from the Safari Extensions Gallery. He further suggested that if I opened up the Safari menu I would find "Safari Extensions Gallery" and if I opened this I should find the necessary tools to remove these unwanted icons. But he could not explain why they were spontaneously appearing, as he had never experienced this.

Okay I thought that sounds easy. However try as I might, I can find no clues in the SEG information page as to how one gets rid of these things.
I find these icons really annoying, and when I select them they are all related to things that I absolutely do not want links to, such as Face Book; Twitter; YouTube etc.
Yesterday a new icon appeared, Why?
This one is called "Ask a Question" and is the most puerile so far.

Can some one please help me by explaining how first, I can get rid of these unwanted extensions, and second, stop them from coming back again.

Thank you,

RB.

Discussion is locked

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Sounds like a toolbar was added.

by sturner--2008 Feb 14, 2011 6:43AM PST

There are some programs that will, if you aren't reading the pop-ups help you by loading in additional programs. Yahoo, Google, Java all will allow you to update your software and helpfully add these "value-added" toolbars. This is marketing at its most awful.

You probably upgrade or loaded in a program that had a marketing deal with these companies and you allowed the primary program to load these secondary programs.

Simply go in as your friend described an unload them.

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Toolbar removed.

by rotebaron Mar 2, 2011 9:46AM PST

Thanks for your advice, my problem was that I had tried to do as my friend suggested and could not discover any way of doing it.

However I persisted by clicking on various things and I found that the toolbar was powered by Conduit, but no were amongst the self congratulatory rhetoric of Conduits webpage could I find a single word about getting rid of their product.

Another day another try. Poking around I found out that the Toolbar in question was called Elf. By this time that was not the name I had for it!

Elf's information page told me of many hundreds of Apps that I could down load for free but yes you guessed it, they say nothing about how to get rid of the blighters. They do helpfully proclaim that everyone loves Apps, just to make me feel even more out of touch with societies trend setters.

I found an article about how to remove Apps from iphone and ipads, but this was no help to me.

Still scratching around I cam across a help menu, my luck with these things has never been good, I can't remember one of them ever being of help. Anyway I had interrogated everything else so why not.
Way down the list of help items , to my surprise there it was, how to uninstall the toolbar.
The instruction sent me to my Finder, then to Applications, then to a folder called Toolbars, and in there to a folder called Elf. Open Elf, click on uninstall, enter my password and ????whoosh! It really was gone.

I now have that heroic feeling of having been tested to breaking point and having prevailed. I think a cup of tea is in order.

RB.

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Good job!

by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Mar 2, 2011 10:43AM PST

add a little something to the tea.

P

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Removing Safari Extensions

by coffeejunkie Mar 3, 2011 7:55AM PST

For Safari extensions, click:
Safari > Preferences > Extensions tab

You should see a list of all installed Safari extensions. There should be an UNINSTALL buttom for each extension. Highlight the one you don't want and click the UNINSTALL button.

It's been a while since I mess with Safari since I usually use either Firefox or Chrome. Let us know if it works for you.

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Not Safari after all.

by rotebaron Mar 3, 2011 9:48AM PST

As of my message of 2 March, you will see that the offending item was not Safari extensions but a tool bar foisted on me by a third party?ELF

I have now removed it.

Anyhow thanks for you comments.

RB

Unwanted Extensions.

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