There are two techniques to stop malicious activity on your Mac: manual and automatic. While both pursue the same goal, the gap between the implementation of each is significant. The process of removing a threat by hand requires troubleshooting skills, a good deal of research, and sometimes quite a bit of intuition. To put it plainly, you will have to check a series of system folders for potentially unwanted items and eliminate the suspects. These locations typically include LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons, Application Support, Profiles, and Login Items. Automatic removal allows you to skip the hard part. A cleaning tool worth its salt traverses all common paths parasitized by Mac malware, detects harmful items based on signature logic and behavioral analysis, and quarantines the detected files to defang the offensive code. This approach is much easier and saves you a lot of time, but it may require a subscription. Regardless of your preferred removal method, bear in mind that some after-effects of the attack may stick around until you address them manually. For instance, if a strain of adware has replaced your browsing defaults such as the search engine and homepage, you will additionally need to specify these settings anew.