It’s not often that an app does questionable things in the background, but the next app secretly does. Therefore, you’d better remove it from your Mac right away.
This app on your Mac should be uninstalled immediately
The app you should remove from your Mac right away is NightOwl. It is an app that has been around since 2018 and allows you to automatically switch between a light and dark version of the operating system. It’s an alternative to the version that comes standard with MacOS, and only activates when you walk away from your Mac.
At first glance there seems nothing wrong with it, but NightOwl secretly does some questionable things in the background. However, that was not always the case, because for 2022 it was an excellent app.
But then things went wrong. The program was acquired by the company ‘TPE.FYI LLC’ in 2022. They have changed a few things in the code of the app. When you install the app, you agree that your Mac will become part of a market research botnet. You cannot turn this off, even if you close the app.
Granted in them license agreement it is briefly described and you can see it in small on the download page. But it’s certainly not very neat. Especially that the botnet remains active even when you close the app is not acceptable. Therefore, you’d better remove NightOwl from your Mac right away.
Here’s how to remove NightOwl from your Mac
To completely remove the app, open the Terminal app on your Mac and run the commands below one-by-one. Note that the fourth command has a space between the ‘/’ and ‘~’.
sudo killall NightOwllaunchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/NightOwlUpdater.plistsudo killall AutoUpdatesudo rm -rf /Applications/NightOwl.app/ ~/Library/LaunchAgents/NightOwlUpdater.plistsudo zsh -c "rm /Users/*/Library/LaunchAgents/NightOwlUpdater.plist"
Apple has now revoked the app’s certificate and you can no longer start the app. Still, it is certainly smart to completely remove the NightOwl app from your Mac with the above commands.
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