Strange icon

[normski4ash]

A strange icon that I do not know what it is has appeared on the task bar at the top of my Imac

It's the one on the left, blue diamond with the letter "S" in white.
If I hover over it it goes away for a few seconds, it I left or right click it I get the spinning beach ball for a few seconds, then nothing, it just appears and disappears randomly.
I honestly have no idea what it is or where it came from or when ! Google search "Blue diamond with white S" gives no results ! I've been through all my apps but there is nothing with that symbol...
Mac running OK, doesn't seem to be affecting performance in any way, just want to know what it is & how to get rid...

Thnx in advance, Norman

 

[Longkeg]

Two possibilities:

Either you’ve inadvertently picked up some adware/malware (check browser extensions) OR ....

You’ve been made an honorary member of clan “El” from the planet Krypton. That icon looks a lot like the big S on Superman’s tights. As we all know the S doesn’t stand for “Superman,” rather it’s the Kryptonian character for his family name (El).

 

[MSastre]

That icon is for Skype. Beachball might be from it trying to load for you to sign in.

 

[TiggrToo]

That icon is for Skype. Beachball might be from it trying to load for you to sign in.

You sure? Not like any Skype icon I've ever seen before...

 

[organicCPU]

There are different kind of status bar menu icons.

- MenuExtra
Most Apple status bar items are of type MenuExtra and packed into folders that do have a .menu extension. Usually they're located in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras. To find those, you could type into terminal:

sudo find / -type d -iname "*.menu"

- StatusItem
Up to Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the status item was the recommended way for third-party developers to integrate status bar icons.

- StatusBarButton
Starting with Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the status bar button is recommended for implementing status bar items.

AFAIK, a StatusItem or a StatusBarButton is just (a part of) a running app or background process, not specifically different to other apps. That's what makes it difficult isolating or tracking back what exactly is causing it. Quitting one after another app from Finder or quitting suspected processes from Activity Monitor could lead to success finding the related app. The wanted app is probably running on your user id/name.

Some menu bar icons are ancillary to SystemUIServer process. In Activity Monitor app get info on open files and ports of SystemUIServer to get some hints.

If the blue icon always appears after restart, the origin of the icon is probably from a process launched at startup or login. Some of those can be found in System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Start Objects (right click and select Show in Finder, then right click to select Show package contents and take a look on the image files inside like PNG, Tifs or PDFs to discover the blue icon).
Some apps that launch after every boot are placing related files in folders named LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons or StartupItems located either in /System/Library, /Library or /~/Library. Those are good candidates, too.

MenuExtra icons, as well as some of the other types of status bar icons, can get arranged or deleted from menu bar by holding the Cmd key while dragging them to another position in the menu bar or pulling them out of the menu bar.

I wish I'd know some command line fu to simply get all status bar items listed. Maybe others do know any?

 

[normski4ash]

OK, trying what Organic CPU suggested I have gone into Activity monitor & there it is The Superman symbol with the words TrayAgent

A quick search in Google suggests it is to do with Daemon Tools - However looking in finder Applications says there isn't a Daemon tools (whatever it is ) there...

Thanks everyone for the replies - MSastre I think I did have skype on here a while back when set up vpn were trying to sort out another problem I seemed to have with there VPN always dropping out ! I eventually sacked them off and uninstalled both Skype and there software from the Mac, but that was like 12 months ago and this has only recently come to my attention.
Will keep googling see if I can find anything elese on trayagent,

Thnx, Normski
[doublepost=1529924433][/doublepost]Digging deeper I have found a thread for removing RayV icon from the menu bar, scrolling down would suggest Mac Shiny. So I googled Mac shiny and sure enough the blue diamond with an "S" in it is Mac Shiny's.
Never heard of them or installed there software...
Now trying to figure out how to get rid of it, I have contacted there support team and have just got an automated reply saying they will get back to me in 24 hours...

Normski

 

[organicCPU]

With that info, it looks to me like it's MacShiny of Cyan Soft Ltd. Some sites call this app Potentially Unwanted App (PUA). That means, it's not really malicious malware in the traditional sense, but something that has no positive effect for you and probably collecting parts of your user data, like usage habits.
To get rid of it, maybe you should install Malwarebytes for Mac (the free version is fine) and see if it discovers MacShiny as PUA.

 

[normski4ash]

OK, downloaded an run Malwarebytes, it found a few things and Cyan.trayagent was one of them.
Options were to remove selected - Yep tick all, take it away. It told me if requested to do a restart please do, then re scan - OK I can manage that, Restart - Rescan - Now showing only one threat - PUP.MacShiny - tell it to remove and it says Remedy failed ! is also saying it is in " Library / App support / Cyansoft, but when I go there it isn't - Oh but the stupid symbol has gone from the menu bar, so 99% success ! Just been to the Quarantine section where there were two instances of Cyansoft, so I told it to delete both, re scan still showing PUP.MacShiny, however this time when I tell it to delete it it says "Deleted" run new scan and not finding anything...
Me thinks that has cured the problem...

Thank you so much, that worked a treat,

Normski

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"Now showing only one threat - PUP.MacShiny - tell it to remove and it says Remedy failed ! is also saying it is in " Library / App support / Cyansoft, but when I go there it isn't"

Could it be that the file in question is invisible?

Suggestion:
Download "EasyFind". It's free:
https://www.devontechnologies.com/download/products.html

Open EasyFind.
Set it up so that there is a checkmark in "invisible files and folders".
Enter "PUP.MacShiny" into the search bar.
Does it find anything?
If so, right-click and choose "Reveal in Finder".
Does that help?

 

[normski4ash]

Hi sorry not got back, recently had heart bypass surgery and had a couple of off days...
I have downloaded and installed Easyfind, it is now running.
My OS (high Sierra) & all apps / progs are on a SSD plugged into a thunderbolt port, that's where I'm looking now, I also have the internal 1TB drive, which I use for recent photos, then there are two 4TB WD my books plugged in via usb, one for all her ladyships rubbish & one is my back up of photos...
This could take a while ! will report back when it has finished... suppose I could eject them and look,
I've also got a WD my cloud 4TB with another my book plugged into that, but can't see it being there as they are only connected via wifi so shouldn't cause a problem, but hey, while I'm at it... If it'll see and run then why not...
[doublepost=1530533130][/doublepost]Oh well, maybe not as long as feared, probably took 20 minutes to run through the OS SSD & found nothing. But then didn't really look at the other drives, just went round & round for a minute then said " 0 Found "
Run Malwarebytes again, 2 threats - Launch Daemons / Mackeeper and another Mackeeper in privileged helper tools. Binned both of those - re run scan and we are clean, nothing showing - Excellent work guys, thnx for your time,
Normski

 

[piktochattr]

OK, downloaded an run Malwarebytes, it found a few things and Cyan.trayagent was one of them.
Options were to remove selected - Yep tick all, take it away. It told me if requested to do a restart please do, then re scan - OK I can manage that, Restart - Rescan - Now showing only one threat - PUP.MacShiny - tell it to remove and it says Remedy failed ! is also saying it is in " Library / App support / Cyansoft, but when I go there it isn't - Oh but the stupid symbol has gone from the menu bar, so 99% success ! Just been to the Quarantine section where there were two instances of Cyansoft, so I told it to delete both, re scan still showing PUP.MacShiny, however this time when I tell it to delete it it says "Deleted" run new scan and not finding anything...
Me thinks that has cured the problem...

Thank you so much, that worked a treat,

Normski

I downloaded Malwarebytes per this suggestion, and it totally fixed my issue with MacShiny! Thank you folks so much!