How to remove Cisco Anyconnect Mobility from OSX Big Sur

[baggetta@gmail.com]

Here's my situation.

I had the Cisco Anyconnect Mobility client installed on my work laptop. When I got let go last week, I didn't want to lose all my data, so I bought a new personal MacBook Air M1 laptop, and imported my work profile on to it. I did a search in the finder for Cisco, and deleted anything I found, but every time I turn on my laptop I get the Cisco Anyconnect Mobility client pop up and I have no idea how to uninstall it, I can't find a file to delete anywhere.

As I'm not no longer employed by that company and their IT team cannot help me. Please if anyone knows how to remove all traces of this application I would love some help!

best,

Matthew

[Spooster IT Services]

Hello baggetta@gmail.com,

Have you followed the following steps?

1. From the Finder go to the Applications folder.
2. Look for the Cisco folder and open it
3. Then double click on Uninstall Anyconnect to start the uninstall process
4. Follow instructions to uninstall the VPN program

If not already, I would say try these steps... If you have already tried the above-mentioned steps, then try the following procedure for manually uninstalling the AnyConnect client from a Mac OS X system:

As root, run the following shell script from the Terminal:

$ sudo /opt/cisco/anyconnect/bin/vpn_uninstall.sh

Note: You will be prompted for your password. Once you enter it, just follow the steps.

If you still having trouble and/or the new Cisco Anyconnect installation complains that you have a version installed, follow these steps:
Enter these commands to clean out the old Cisco VPN kernel extension and reboot the system.

sudo -s
rm -rf /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN
rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN
rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/CiscoVPN.kext
rm -rf /Library/Extensions/CiscoVPN.kext
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/vpnclient-kext.pkg
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/vpnclient-startup.pkg
reboot

If you installed the Cisco VPN for Mac version 4.1.08005 package, enter these commands to delete the misplaced files. The deletion of these files will not affect your system, since applications do not use these misplaced files in their current location.

sudo -s
rm -rf /Cisco\ VPN\ Client.mpkg
rm -rf /com.nexUmoja.Shimo.plist
rm -rf /Profiles
rm -rf /Shimo.app
exit
Enter these commands if you no longer need the old Cisco VPN Client.

sudo -s
rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/Shimo
rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/cisco-vpnclient.framework
rm -rf /Library/Extensions/tun.kext
rm -rf /Library/Extensions/tap.kext
rm -rf /private/opt/cisco-vpnclient
rm -rf /Applications/VPNClient.app
rm -rf /Applications/Shimo.app
rm -rf /private/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/vpnclient-api.pkg
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/vpnclient-bin.pkg
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/vpnclient-gui.pkg
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/vpnclient-profiles.pkg
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.nexUmoja.Shimo.plist
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Shimo
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.cisco.VPNClient.plist
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/SyncServices/Local/TFSM/com.
nexumoja.Shimo.Profiles
rm -rf ~/Library/Logs/Shimo*
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Shimo
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Growl/Tickets/Shimo.growlTicket
exit
Finally this.

sudo pkgutil --forget com.cisco.pkg.anyconnect.vpn

If you found this information useful, please remember to mark this answer as helpful. 

[danshom]

Does anyone have similar instructions for manually cleaning up the latest 4.10.x AnyConnect Client for MacOS?  Also, does anyone know where the client stores the SAML tokens locally?  My client won't prompt for login because it has a token saved somewhere.

[baggetta@gmail.com]

Hi there, 

Thanks for the detailed response. For method 1, there is no Cisco folder in my Applications. I copy/pasted all the commands you listed above into Terminal, after the last one, it returned this: "No receipt for 'com.cisco.pkg.anyconnect.vpn' found at '/'."