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I have this symbol in my menu bar, I don't know where it came from. I can't remove it by using Cmd drag, whenever I move the mouse over it the mouse turns into the spinning rainbow wheel. Can anyone help please?

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  • Have you tried Force Quit to see if any apps show up in red?
    – Natsfan
    Commented Aug 11, 2018 at 23:12
  • You can remove an icon by holding Command and dragging it off the bar.
    – Joseph
    Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 19:40

4 Answers 4

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This is the icon for an old version of Adobe Application Manager or Adobe Updater. It wouldn't show up in the standard Force Quit dialog, so I would recommend the following steps:

  1. Open Activity Monitor, either by searching in Spotlight (Command-Space) or opening it from /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.
  2. Search for "adobe".
  3. Select each relevant result and click the "X" octagon in the top left, then confirm with the Force Quit option.
  4. Reopen Adobe Application Manager or Adobe Updater, and use it to update or uninstall the two pieces of Adobe software which need to be updated.
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You can disable Adobe Application Manager using these steps:

Turn off automatic updates on Mac OS

If your computer is connected to the internet, then you can change the Adobe Updater preferences to not check for updates.

To Change the Adobe Updater preferences, do the following:

  • Start the Adobe Updater application from /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Utilities/Adobe Updater5/.
  • When the update screen appears, click the Preferences link.
  • Uncheck the Automatically Check for updates checkbox and click OK.

If your computer does not have an internet connection, then you can manually edit the AdobeUpdaterPreferences.dat file.

To manually edit the AdobeUpdaterPreferences.dat file, do the following:

  • Start the Adobe Updater application from /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Utilities/Adobe Updater5/.
  • When the Adobe Updater dialog appears, stating that there is no Internet connection, click Cancel.
  • Navigate to "/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Updater5/" and open the AdobeUpdaterPrefs.dat file in TextEdit.
  • If the 1 tag already exists, then change the value from 1 to 0. Otherwise, add the line 0 anywhere between the tags.
  • Close and save the AdobeUpdaterPrefs.dat file.

Steps copied verbatim from Adobe Support

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The general solution to this problem is to review each and every item that starts up when you log into your Mac. That involves looking in several locations so I use a tool that is free to try like BarTender to identify and manage the menu bar.

You do need to pay for it if you keep using it. That icon looks like Adobe, but who knows what you installed and who may have copied an Adobe icon if you have malware or just things you didn’t realize were modifying your system installed.

Now the spinning wheel gives you another free tool tool - start Activity Monitor and then see which apps or processes are not responding. If you don’t see anything, use the view menu to show all processes.

Here are other relevant threads:

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I'd start by going to the Apple menu and selecting "Force Quit". Apps that are hung up or unresponsive usually show up in red when it lists the running apps. If an app does show up, select it and hit "Force Quit". This method will tell you the name of the app and stop the beach balling...

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  • Why the downvote on my answer? I actually used this and it worked fine!
    – Natsfan
    Commented Aug 12, 2018 at 21:01

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