It usually happens after you download something free. You go back online and your browser suddenly looks unfamiliar. There’s new buttons and weird icons in the place of what you used to have. A strange search page from a company you have never heard has taken the place of your homepage.

How did I get that annoying toolbar?

You have inadvertently downloaded a browser toolbar that came bundled with other software.

Free programs, like Adobe Reader, often include add-ons like toolbars or browser extensions. Most of the time, during the installation of the software, an opt-out option will be presented for the add-on. But, lots of people click through without reading, and when they’re finished they discover they have downloaded something they didn’t intend to.

To keep this from happening in the first place, slow down and read the screens. You could save yourself lots of time and headaches if you do.

What do browser toolbars do to my computer?

• Change your homepage and your search engine without your permission or awareness
• Track your browsing activities and searches
• Display annoying ads and manipulate search results
• Take up a lot of space inside the browser
• Slow down your surfing speed
• Fight against each other and become impossible for the average user to fully uninstall

In some cases, toolbars or add-ons can be quite useful, but Avast users have rated only 4% of toolbars as “good” or “useful”. The rest are "poor" or "very poor".

The ten most unpopular toolbars are:

How do you get back your normal browser?

Avast Browser Cleanup has identified more than 60 million different browser add-ons and removed more than 650 million from users’ browsers in the past two years. Avast Browser Cleanup can help you remove annoying browser toolbars and regain your normal browser settings.

Avast Browser Cleanup is integrated in all free and premium Avast products. If you use another security program, then you can download Avast Browser Cleanup as a standalone version.