Manual cleanup is a scanner-and-remediation approach that runs on demand instead of continuously in the background. A user or administrator launches a scan, the tool checks files, processes, browser settings, and other common persistence points, and then it quarantines or removes anything flagged as malicious or suspicious.
This matters because not every threat requires full-time monitoring. Manual cleanup is useful for spot checks, post-incident sweeps, and devices that already have baseline defenses but still need an extra way to hunt for adware, unwanted extensions, or leftover malware components. In real defenses, it often works as a second opinion or a repair tool after an infection is suspected. In attacks, it can be defeated by threats that hide in less obvious locations or that reappear through startup items and scheduled tasks, so effective cleanup usually combines scanning with verification that the persistence mechanism is gone.