Can't remove unknown symbol from menu bar

Solution 1:

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.

Solution 2:

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

Solution 3:

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.

• https://www.macbartender.com/

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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• Two strange icons in my menu bar
• How can I remove this icon from the menu bar?