How to find out the app pushing pop up ads in Galaxy S7 and S7 edge?

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• Thank you so much for this article. My moms phone just started receiving such pop up ads, so we waited for another one and found out it was Klondike solitaire so we uninstalled it, and tah dah, they never came back again.

  Thank you so much!

  • Enjoy the phone.

• Agree with the Klondike Solitare comment. It was installed without my knowledge along with the Oreo upgrade.

• I checked Recent Apps and the icon was white with no text which means I can't tell which app is pushing the pop up?ads. I get them for "Wish" which appears to be shopping and a video game "Final Fantasy". I will add more later if I can figure anything out. It interrupts everytbing I do on my phone.

  • Thank you for sharing the info. When you see the ads, don't close it. You just tap Recents button. However some very bad guys may bypass the title with empty one as what you experienced.

• Thank you! So simple, yet so useful.

  For those that say it doesn't work I'd like to emphasize something- Do NOT clear the ad from your screen. If you clear the ad first, then it will not show up.
  For me, the issue was with Klondike Solitaire. I'm not sure how it even got installed, but a recent Verizon Droid update (to Oreo, I think) allowed it to start popping up full screen ads like crazy. This cleared it. Thank you.

  • Thank you for sharing the tip..

• Hello,

  I have a new ad that pops up every time I get a phone call from somebody. It is a picture of a cartoon man holding a phone. There is a different add every time with the same cartoon. I have taken some screenshots of this if that helps. Please help!

  • You may share the screenshot on our Facebook page so that others can help you.

• How can I find the list of apps installed and sort it by date of installation?

  • The apps screen lists all apps. But your cannot sort them based on the installation date.

    For apps installed from Google Play store, there are more ways to sort them in the Play store app. But the installation date is not an option.

• I have been getting full page pop up ads for a month now, and they happen all the time. When I unlock my phone, when in the middle of a call or writing a text/e-mail, and even when plugging in a charger or putting on the wireless desktop charger. It is ALWAYS A GOOGLE PLAY app popup,Usually a game,Period tracker,or even a anti virus app ironically!
  I have tried everything listed here to no avail as well as adding malware blockers(promptly deleting them again after no success),and even deleting most of my often used apps.

  How else can I track the malware culprit? These google play popups don't include any info about what app sent them!!!!!

  • Some "professional" spammers /malware may hide the track. You should back up the all your data and reset the phone. When restoring the phone, don't reinstall all apps. You should install trusted apps only.

    If you get apps only from Play store, you don't need antivius or anti-malware apps. These apps often are suspicious. They may cause may damages because of permissions granted to them.

• Hello !
  I have a quite unique problem with a pop up ad . No matter what I am doing , recently a tear shaped ad appears in the upper right corner of my Samsung Galaxy S7 phone freezing my entire screen for about 2 minutes then it suddenly disappears . How can I get rid of it ?

  • Share the screenshot it photo in our Facebook page so that others can see what you are talking about.

• This article really helped the clicking the recents button thing was exactly the solution. I closed all apps and then locked and unlocked my phone (the trigger for the ad) and then clicked recents button and the app was there. I'm on the SG s8+ tho but it worked on the first try. Thanks!!

  • Thank you for sharing the tips.

• I feel lucky to have found this. Thank you very much, as the unwanted ad was driving me nuts.I immediately hit the recent button and directly behind that was Facebook, except it was all white with no text. I pushed the X on the upper right, restarted my phone and it's gone! Yay! Of course, now that I've written this. I better check one more time.
  Sweeeet!
  Thank you!

  • Thank you for your feedback.

• The article is 100% incorrect and useless. A full page ad pops up, hit the recent button, and nothing shows or just an app that you loaded yourself such as Facebook, messenger, Instagram, etc... no of which are slamming your phone with full page pop up ads. The full page ads are allowed by Android, Android in no way shows you the app or malicious software that is attacking your phone with ads. Install a popup blocker, start uninstalling every app in reverse order until the popups stop, or backup and format you phone.

  • There are several ways to push the ads. Some are pushed through notifications channel. Some are directly through background running process.

    The simple method shown in this guide can find the source of some (not all depending on how the pop up ad is pushed) of these apps.

    I do not recommend pop up blocker. Most of them can only block normal pop up ads from apps running in the foreground. Some of these apps even abuse the granted previlage and push own pop up ads.

• I thought looking under the recent button was going to have it. Unfortunatly there is no name in the title bar in my case it is just a solid red bar.

  • Did you find it in the list recent apps?

    • I am having this exact same issue. The recent app that displays has no name and kind of looks like the Gmail one.

      • Gmail never pushes out such ads. Very likely, it's from some bad guys.

        Some nasty apps may impersonate other apps.

        Anyway, if you cannot find out the app, it's better to backup the phone and reset it. You should also install apps only from reliable sources. Don't sideload apps.

• My s7 keeps showing ads constantly.What can i do to stop this?

  • How are the ads shown? Popup? Notification? Can you identify the app pushing the ads?

• This is 100% WRONG article.

  I faced the same issue but after I removed "malicious" app which name was put in the header nothing really changed! I kept removing all apps which shows in the title of every ads and it seems that malicious app just pretend it to be those apps, which actually don't show any ads to you.

  It became obvious first when ads window had Telegram title, and I pretty much sure that Telegram don't need to spam any ads because it is quite popular. But even after I removed Telegram ads continued to popup but this time with "Oculus Driver" title which was not app at all and I have no idea how can I remove it and obviously the malicious app is not Oculus Driver but some other app on my Samsung S8

  • The post is for normal apps pushing notification when running in background.

    But for your case, it sounds like a malware issue, not a normal app pushing popup ads. Did you install any apps from sources other than Googe Play and Galaxy apps?

• I'm having an issue with my galaxy s7 playing ads for heroes of the storm out loud. I can't figure out what ap is pushing them. It happens even when I'm not using my phone! Even when all the apps are closed! I haven't downloaded any new apps. What is going on?!

  • Did you follow the guide? The guide shows you exactly how to find out the app that pushing the ad.

    • I got the same issue with my S7. I followed the guide but it doesn't work. It the guide you can see ES File Explorer but I was not able to see anything on my phone apart from a big ad screen. It did not show any app name.
      I also installed ES File Explorer. According to guide, it may be the bad guy to push popup ad. So I uninstalled it to see how it goes. Unfortunately, I still got ad popped up. What app is the culprit?

      • When the ad is shown, wait a few seconds, tap the Recent button to see the culprit.

        if it is not working, you can try go to Settings--Apps, tap menu key (3 vertical dots in top right), tap special access, tap Apps that can appear on top. Normally, apps that push such pop up ads require this permission. But some malicious app developer may bypass this permission. As there should be quite a lot of apps with this permission, you cannot identify the culprit. But you can see which one is suspicious.

        After you uninstall ES file explorer, you should reboot the phone. Just my advice. Don't ask why.