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August 27, 2026

My browser is showing all sorts of things: a 15-minute clean-up

One day, your browser — the program you use to go on the internet — no longer looks like itself. Ads open on their own, the home page has changed without you asking, an unfamiliar bar has appeared at the top, and everything has become slow.

Take a breath: in the vast majority of cases, this isn’t a virus and your computer isn’t broken. Some unwanted little programs — “extensions” — have slipped into the browser. Remove them and everything goes back to normal. Give yourself a quarter of an hour, calmly.

Where it comes from

• From a free program installed by clicking “Next” a bit too quickly: the real program installs, and three others come along with it.
• From a “Download” button clicked on a fake ad, on a weather, recipe or games site.
• From permission given without thinking to a window asking “Do you want to receive notifications?”

None of this is foolish. Those buttons are designed to be clicked. And above all, nothing is lost.

The clean-up, step by step

1. First, write down what bothers you (the home page, the ads, a bar at the top). It’ll help you check at the end that it’s really fixed.
2. Open the browser menu: the three dots or three lines at the top right on Chrome and Edge, the “Safari” menu at the top left of the screen on a Mac. Look for “Extensions” (or “Add-ons”).
3. Look at the list. Anything you don’t recognize, remove it. There’s no risk in removing one extension too many: the browser works perfectly well without any at all.
4. Go back to the menu, then into “Settings”. Set the home page you want, and choose your usual search engine (Google, most of the time).
5. Still in the settings, look for “Privacy” then “Clear browsing data”. Tick the history and temporary files — but not the passwords, or you’ll have to type them all in again.
6. Next, look for “Notifications” in those same settings, and remove the sites allowed to send you messages. That’s where those pop-ups in the corner of the screen come from.
7. Close the browser completely, then reopen it. Go back to your list from step 1 and check.

What you should never do

Don’t search the internet for a “cleaner” to fix the problem. The first results are often unwanted programs themselves, and you’d be installing one more. The clean-up happens inside the browser, using the settings it already has.

Be wary, too, if searching for a service you use often no longer takes you quite to the right place. In Montreal, this typically shows up on searches like “Clic Santé appointment”, “SAAQclic” or “Canada Post tracking”: a hijacked search engine puts a look-alike copy of the real site first. After the clean-up, type those addresses yourself once, and bookmark them.

So it doesn’t come back

One habit is enough, and it applies to everything: when a window offers you something you didn’t ask for, the right answer is no. Not “later”, not “fine, just to see” — no.

And if a fake alert came before all this, you’ll find what to do in our article on messages claiming your computer is infected.

If you’d rather do this tidy-up with someone beside you instead of alone in front of the screen, that’s exactly the kind of house call we make, across the Montreal neighbourhoods we serve, from the Plateau to Rivière-des-Prairies. We take the opportunity to show you the two or three reflexes that prevent the next time.