Cannot get rid of Any Search Manager from Safari

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Okay I give up!
I have spent an hour scouring the internet for a way to get rid of Any Search Manage from my Safari browser (13.0.4)

I have visited several sites listing step by step instructions and I have followed them without success. I can be removed from website data but simply comes back. It has hijacked my Safari Preferences > General > New Window Opens With, New Tab Opens With and Homepage menus so that they are greyed out so that all open the Any Search Manager page instead.

It does not seem to be system wide, I can find no associated app nor any extension in Safari other than AdGuard.

It is limited to Safari only with Brave and Vivaldi functioning normally. I no longer have Chrome or Firefox installed.

I am at the point of considering reseting Safari because I have tried everything else including clearing all Safari History, running DetectX Swift, the free version of Malwarebytes, Disk Utility First Aid and OnyX.

I'd really appreciate some help here.:Grimmace:
 
M

MBAmtloin

Guest
do you want to switch a search engine host, like duck duck go?
if things are greyed out, i would reset or reinstall safari, things should not be grayed out.
did this happen this after an OSX update?
you might have downloaded a nasty patch-malware, what does your homepage go to?
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
No update involved. Safari cannot be reinstalled because it can't be removed and I no longer know how to completely reset Safari but thanks for your reply.
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Yes, thanks I tried that.
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
Do you know how you got it? I might give it a whirl in a vm copy if you don’t have a solution by this weekend.
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
The wired thing is I can't find it anywhere. My guess is it came parcelled with something else. There is, believe it or not an uninstall link at the bottom of its search page but that only takes you to a page with instructions on how to uninstall the app. If only it was that easy. The only place I see it at all is in Safari Prefs > Privacy > Manage Website Data. Here there are two cached items akamaihd.net which I think is associated and anysearchmanager.com I can remove them, which I have done numerous times but they come straight back.
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
I FIXED IT !!!

On this page there was a clue that I had not seen on other pages on removal of Any Search Manager. See Below

Screen Shot 2020-01-30 at 4.03.08 pm.png

What I found in my case was an Admin Preference called "Mainpage" and it too said "Unassigned" like the example above.

Interesting because I removed this element using DetectX Swift earlier today. Apparently not all of it.

Anyway all page prefs are back in Safari and no more Any Search Manager :smile
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
I FIXED IT !!!

On this page there was a clue that I had not seen on other pages on removal of Any Search Manager. See Below


What I found in my case was an Admin Preference called "Mainpage" and it too said "Unassigned" like the example above.

Interesting because I removed this element using DetectX Swift earlier today. Apparently not all of it.

Anyway all page prefs are back in Safari and no more Any Search Manager :smile

Sweet... sounds like a real pain in the rear. You should send an update to the DetectX developer in case this is an additional fix he can implement.
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Yes. Interesting because as I said this morning I did a scan using DetectX and found 4 references to Mainpage, I deleted them all but later in desperation I revisited Malwarebytes which I abandoned a while back due to their new business model. I was pleased to find there is still a free version for macOS even though it constantly pesters you to upgrade to premium. I ran it and it too came up with 4 instances of Mainpage which I removed again. In any case it did not remove the Admin Profile prefs.
 

chscag

Well-known member
Staff member
Admin
Joined
Jan 23, 2008
Messages
65,248
Reaction score
1,833
Points
113
Location
Keller, Texas
Your Mac's Specs
2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
In any case it did not remove the Admin Profile prefs.

Why would it? Admin Profile preferences are legal entries and not malware. How is DetectX and/or Malwarebytes going to know the difference between profiles?
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
I suppose one might think such things are identified by name by malware definitions. As such anything named Mainpage would be questionable. Perhaps that's not how they work but it certainly was a part of the problem.


Sent from my iPhone using Mac-Forums
 
Joined
Sep 30, 2007
Messages
9,962
Reaction score
1,235
Points
113
Location
The Republic of Neptune
Your Mac's Specs
2019 iMac 27"; 2020 M1 MacBook Air; macOS up-to-date... always.
Why would it? Admin Profile preferences are legal entries and not malware. How is DetectX and/or Malwarebytes going to know the difference between profiles?

How would they know a browser extension, kernel, or anything else is not malware? I'm not familiar with how Profiles work, but surely there's a file stored somewhere that has specific properties that can be tied straight back to AnySearch Manager.
 
M

MBAmtloin

Guest
Im happy your web browser is working, these things are frustrating no matter how menial or little the problem might be.
also
I noticed that Safari has improved greatly this month. that upgrade if more flexible than Edge or Firefox.
 
Joined
Aug 5, 2011
Messages
131
Reaction score
0
Points
16
Hi Rod
Thanks this helped a lot, i even installed clean my mac
which did not clean for anysearch, does it come back
when you reboot or is it clean?
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
Yes, well as stated my problem was that there was no app. Many of the help pages online describe methods of deleting the app and associated files or a browser extension but that was not the issue. It’s likely that this annoying piece of malware has evolved since those articles were published.
no it hasn’t come back since I rooted out the Mainpage files.
 
OP
Rod

Rod


Joined
Jun 12, 2011
Messages
9,628
Reaction score
1,832
Points
113
Location
Melbourne, Australia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Your Mac's Specs
2021 M1 MacBook Pro 14" macOS 14.4.1, Mid 2010MacBook 13" iPhone 13 Pro max, iPad 6, Apple Watch SE.
You’re welcome.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top