Unnecessary and Unwanted Toolbars

Posted on: June 14th, 2010

Toolbars are those little horizontal lines at the top of your browser window that are full of buttons, boxes, and sometimes news or advertisements. I included a picture here of an extreme case of toolbar overload. (You can click on the image on the right to see a close-up and then touch ESC to continue reading). This individual had 17 toolbars installed in his browser. As you can see, he does not have much space left for the actual page!

The most common toolbars are: Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, AOL Toolbar, and Ask Toolbar.

In some cases a toolbar is necessary or useful. But I find way too often that when I ask a user whether they use those toolbars I see, they have no idea what they are for, or how they even got there. So the case of unnecessary toolbars is pretty common.

This is undesirable for a couple of reasons:

- They slow down your browser. Generally a browser with toolbars takes longer to start it up.
- They take up space on the screen leaving less for the actual page content that you want to see.
- Some of them interfere with the loading and displaying of web pages.

One of the most notorious toolbars is called MyWebSearch. It messes with your online searches and produce bogus results that are ads basically. It’s also linked with many cases of infected computers. So whenever I see MyWebSearch on a computer I know that the computer needs a good cleanup.

Please note: I’d like to mention a fairly common misconception. Removing a toolbar, like Google or Yahoo, does not mean that you won’t be able to use Google or Yahoo. They are simply there so that you can access some features more quickly. For example, these toolbars check on your Google or Yahoo mail account periodically, and can alert you if you receive a new email. Also, by a click of a button, they can open your inbox page. But you can check your email without a toolbar.

The simple rule with regard to toolbars is: If you don’t use it, get rid of it!

How to Get Rid of Them?

Fortunately, this is not too hard. First of all make sure you don’t need the toolbar. If you are unsure then first disable them and then see if you run into any situation where you’d need them and just enable them again.

Disabling is easiest in Internet Explorer 8. In that browser there is a little ‘x’ on the left of the toolbars. Simply click on those and then disable them. Here’s the procedure for the 3 most common browsers:

- Internet Explorer: Go to Tools->Internet Options. Click on the Programs tab and then the Manage Add-Ons button. Make sure when you disable a toolbar, then disable the toolbar helper related to that particular one as well. Not all toolbars have toolbar helpers, but it’s not uncommon.

- Mozilla Firefox: Click on Tools->Add-Ons in the menu. Under the Extensions you’ll find the toolbars and can disable them there.

- Google Chrome: This browser doesn’t seem to have been “infected” with toolbars yet. I actually didn’t find options for toolbar handling, or even toolbars to load on it.

Uninstalling can be done using the Windows’ built-in Add/Remove Program (aka “Programs and Features” in Vista and Windows 7) in the Control Panel. Simply wade through the list and uninstall the toolbars. You can also use CCleaner, which is my favorite, and under its Tools you can get the same list, just much faster )

How to Prevent Them From Getting on?

Okay. Now you have a nice clean, and fast, browser. The next step is to learn how you can prevent this clutter from occurring again.

The most common way toolbars get installed is by bundling them with other software. For example, even one of my favorite software, CCleaner, will try to install Yahoo Toolbar, if I don’t uncheck it.

The reason for bundling is simply advertisement. The software makers get money from the company whose product they push. I find this understandable and in many cases this helps the product to stay free of charge.

The prevention is simple: instead of mechanically clicking Next, Next, Next …. When you install something, take a moment and read the pages (at least scan them through), especially when you see checkmarks! Just uncheck the toolbar options. In some cases you might get a message that a certain feature will be missing if you don’t install the toolbar – for example: Foxit Reader. You should just check whether you need that feature or not. Chances are you won’t. But in a vast majority of cases you can uncheck the toolbar install options without any adverse effect.

I hope this helped you out and you can now browse without clutter.

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