How I Finally Stopped Those Annoying McAfee Pop-Ups on My Laptop
If you’re like me, dealing with persistent McAfee pop-ups—especially in the bottom right corner—can get pretty exhausting. They usually pop up warning you about renewals, upgrades, or just try to get you to click somewhere. And honestly, sometimes they’re way too invasive. I spent a good chunk of time trying different fixes, so here’s what finally worked for me, in case it helps someone else out there.
Checking for McAfee Extensions in Chrome
The first thing I looked at was whether McAfee snuck into my browser as an extension. That was the sneakiest part—sometimes, these extensions install without you noticing, especially if you’ve gotten a free trial or bundle with other downloads. I’d say, on most browsers, this is a common source of those popup triggers.
For Chrome, I opened up the menu (the three vertical dots in the top right corner), then went to More tools > Extensions. If you prefer, just type chrome://extensions/ straight into the address bar, and it takes you directly there. Once you’re on the Extensions page, scan for anything related to McAfee—things named “McAfee WebAdvisor” or similar. If you find any, click the Remove button. Usually it’s a trash bin icon or a simple button that says “Remove.” After that, the popup triggers seemed to quiet down for me, at least on Chrome.
How to Disable McAfee Notifications in Chrome
Next up was managing those annoying notification prompts. Still in Chrome, I went to Settings, then navigated to Privacy and security > Site Settings > Notifications. Here’s where Chrome controls which sites can send annoying pop-ups or alerts.
Under Allowed to send notifications, I looked for anything that mentioned McAfee or its related domains. If I saw it, I just clicked the three dots next to the entry and chose Block. That stopped that particular site from bothering me anymore. Also, I turned off Ask before sending (recommended) so that no new sites could ask for permission to send notifications in the future.
Restarted Chrome after making these changes, and honestly, the pop-ups seemed to lessen or disappear. It’s not a perfect fix, but it helped push the worst ones away.
Uninstalling McAfee Entirely — Because Sometimes You Have To
But let’s be real—these browser tweaks don’t completely take care of the core problem if McAfee is installed on the system itself. That’s where I ran into more frustration. If McAfee is installed at the OS level, it can still send notifications or cause pop-ups, even if the browser stuff is cleaned up.
I then went to Settings > Apps & Features (or just hit Win + I and go to Settings). I typed “McAfee” into the search box to find any leftover apps. From there, I carefully clicked each McAfee program—like McAfee Total Protection or McAfee LiveSafe—and chose Uninstall. During this process, some prompted for permission—be sure to click Yes or Allow.
The uninstaller sometimes prompted extra steps or opened their own window, especially with more recent versions. I had to run the uninstaller as an administrator (right-click the uninstaller shortcut and choose Run as administrator) a couple of times to get it through. Sometimes just doing that made the uninstall go smoother and actually do the job.
After uninstalling, I rebooted, and if the pop-ups still kept coming back, I ran a quick pass with tools like Malwarebytes to clean up leftovers. Sometimes, McAfee leaves behind files or registry entries that can cause issues, and programs like Revo Uninstaller or Malwarebytes can help there.
Important Warnings & Tips
Just a heads up—*removing* McAfee at the system level means you’re losing its protection features. So, if you decide to do this, make sure you have another security setup ready—like Windows Defender, which is actually decent these days. And definitely don’t click on suspicious pop-ups claiming to be security alerts like these—fake alerts can mimic real ones but are malicious.
Also, a lost license or keys could be an issue if you plan to reinstall later, so keep any license info safe. Remember: clearing out McAfee’s remnants can be tricky, and sometimes it takes multiple attempts or running cleanup tools before everything’s truly gone.
Final thoughts
This whole journey was a bit of a trial-and-error process for me. Sometimes, it took a couple of reboots or fiddling with permissions to get rid of those windows for good. But after all that, the pop-ups finally subsided, and I could breathe again. Hopefully, this write-up helps you skip the hours of frustration I went through—because honestly, it’s a relief when these persistent pestering alerts stop.
Double-check that you’ve removed any leftover apps, disabled notifications in Chrome, and if needed, uninstalled McAfee entirely. Good luck, and I hope your experience is smoother than mine was!
Hope this helped — it took me way too long to figure it out. Anyway, hope this saves someone else a weekend.