How to remove Shlayer Trojan (Mac)

What is Shlayer Trojan

Shlayer is a trojan-based infection designed to cause a chain of multiple malware infiltrations on your device. The number of malware may vary from typical adware or fake search engine tools to more dreadful types like Ransomware that inevitably encrypts users’ data. Once the trojan sneaks into the system it starts running scripts that install malware along the way. For example, the adware can distribute deceptive on-screen advertisements that redirect users to malicious resources that trick inexperienced people into downloading malware. All of these methods are basically developed for gathering personal information like passwords, geolocations, credentials, and other data that is transferred to third parties for income purposes. Shlayer Trojan has been spotted bundling Chumsearch Safari browser extension, MyShopCoupon, and fake optimization utilities like Mac Cleanup Pro that can also put your data at risk. Getting rid of Shlayer Trojan is the number one thing that you should do to prevent further infections. Thereafter, you will have to uninstall everything caused by the trojan to relieve your device from malware pressure.

How Shlayer Trojan infected your computer

Shlayer Trojan is usually disguised as an Adobe Flash Player installer or software cracking tool. When visiting doubtful pages, users are said that their Adobe Flash Player is outdated and needs to be updated. Of course, this is just another social-engineering trick designed to infect devices. Besides that, people tend to visit lots of suspicious Torrent pages that can spread a world of malvertising and intrusive ads. Whilst visiting such websites, cybercriminals utilize visual tricks to instill legitimacy in their dubious software, therefore forcing people into downloading it from the web. In addition to this, extortionists largely capitalize on e-mail campaigns that are categorized as spam. Attaching malicious links and files like PDFs, executables, Microsoft Office, and other trust-looking files, fool users into downloading them under the pretext of some urgency. Therefore, clicking on these files will lead to immediate infiltration of trojans causing a multitude of other Potentially Unwanted Applications installed on your computer. Most users are getting fooled due to unawareness and gullible interest that can result in massive data or financial loss. You should be very cautious about everything you visit or download from the web in order to restrict yourself from this kind of circumstances. Follow further instructions to remove Shlayer Trojan from your computer down below.

Remove Shlayer manually for free

Important update: Shlayer hijacker installs malicious Device Profile called AdminPrefs on MacOS, that won’t allow users to make changes to browser search engine and homepage settings. Follow instructions below to remove this profile.

Remove Shlayer profile

1. Go to System Preferences and click on Profiles.
2. In the list of profiles on the left side choose AdminPrefs and click on “-” button to remove it.
3. In your case it can be named differently, in this case remove all visible profiles. Check the picture below to see how it looks like.

Note: Shlayer sets up to start on Mac OS startup. Therefore, before starting the removal, perform these steps:

1. Open System Preferences, choose Users & Groups.
2. Choose your account (set up as Current User).
3. Click Login Items tab.
4. Find unwanted entry. Select it, and click the “-“ (minus) button to remove it.

Note 2: Shlayer won’t quit just by closing it, therefor use Force Quit to end the process.

1. Press 3 buttons at the same time: Option, Command, and Esc (Escape). This is similar to Control-Alt-Delete on a Windows PC.
2. Choose unwanted entry in the list.
3. Click Force Quit button.

Here is a manual step-by-step tutorial for full Shlayer removal from your computer. This works 99% and was checked with the latest versions of Shlayer installer on operating systems with the latest updates and browser versions.

Remove Shlayer from Applications

Remove Shlayer from Mac:

1. In the Finder sidebar, click Applications.
2. Shlayer might have an Uninstaller. If you see Uninstall Shlayer or Shlayer Uninstaller, double-click it and follow the onscreen instructions.
3. Otherwise, drag Shlayer from the Applications folder to the Trash (located at the end of the Dock).
4. Then choose Finder > Empty Trash.

Cannot uninstall Shlayer

If you can’t uninstall Shlayer using instructions above, or it keeps coming back, you can use free AppCleaner for Mac to remove all residual data and libraries of Shlayer. Follow instructions below:

1. Download free AppCleaner.
2. Drag Shlayer from Applications folder to AppCleaner window.
3. Choose files and folders you want to remove along with Shlayer.
4. Click Delete button.

Remove Shlayer add-on from your browsers

Removing Shlayer from Applications often does not bring the desired effect. It is a browser extension and it may still be active in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Here are instructions on how to remove the Shlayer extension from your browsers manually.

Google Chrome:

Safari:

1. Start Safari on your Mac, click Safari to open drop-down menu and choose Preferences
2. Click Extensions tab.
3. Find unwanted extension.
4. Click Uninstall button to remove it.

1. Start Google Chrome browser
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) chrome://extensions.
3. Find unwanted related extension.
4. Click the Remove button to remove them.
5. Also remove other suspicious extensions from the list.

Mozilla Firefox:

1. Start Mozilla Firefox browser.
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) about:addons.
3. Find unwanted related extension.
4. Click three-dots icon near it and choose Remove in the menu.
5. In opened dialog window click Remove button to confirm the action.
6. Remove all suspicious extensions from the list.

Reset browser settings

To finish Shlayer removal reset your browser settings to make sure, there are no leftover items in browser folders.

Reset Safari:

1. Start Safari on your Mac, click Safari to open drop-down menu and choose Preferences
2. Go to the Privacy section of Safari’s preferences.
3. Click Remove All Website Data button.
4. In opened window click Remove Now button to remove data stored by websites in Safari.
5. Go to the Advanced section of Safari’s preferences.
6. Click the Show Develop menu in menu bar option.
7. In the menu click Develop and select Empty Caches from this menu.
8. Again, go to Safari menu and choose Clear History….
9. Choose to clear all history and click Clear History button.

Google Chrome:

1. Start Google Chrome browser
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) chrome://settings.
3. On the left panel expand Advanced options.
4. Choose Reset and clean up.
5. Click on Restore settings to their original defaults link and confirm by clicking Reset button.

Mozilla Firefox:

1. Start Mozilla Firefox browser.
2. In address box type (or copy-paste) about:support.
3. Click Refresh Firefox… button.
4. Click Refresh Firefox button in opened dialog window to confirm.

Remove following files and folders of Shlayer


/Applications/Advanced Mac Cleaner
/Applications/MyMacUpdater
/Applications/MyShopcoupon
/Applications/mediaDownloader
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.MyMacUpdater.agent.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.MyShopcoupon.agent.plist
/mm-plugin.dylib
/myshopcoupon.safariextz
~ Library/Application Support/amc
~ Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/Extensions/Chumsearch+.safariextension
~ Library/LaunchAgents/com.pcv.hlpramcn.plist
~ Library/Safari/Extensions/Chumsearch+.safariextz


Download AdGuard for Mac to block malicious pop-ups, that promote Shlayer

AdGuard is the best ad-blocker, internet filtering, and internet security application for macOS. It can cut out unwanted banners from site pages, block pop-ups, stop redirects, and prevent users from visiting potentially dangerous resources. Use it to stop ads promoting Shlayer in browsers.

Download AdGuard for Mac

How to protect Mac OSX from adware, like Shlayer

Mac OSX is known to be one of the safest operating systems, and for a long time there was no need for antivirus products for Mac. But with the growing popularity of Mac computers and notebooks and evolving technology, viruses, trojans, adware, toolbars, hijackers, and other malware paved the way for Mac users. We recommend you to use one of the best anti-malware for Mac available – Malwarebytes for Mac.

Download Malwarebytes for Mac