Malwarebytes seems interesting, but it also sounds like the free version only allows for on-demand scans? Please correct me if I'm wrong. This is why I'm looking for something geared towards doing a basic automatic scan on folder(s) that I specify, as a safety net for anything that I do download. But even with the best precautions, I don't trust myself to never make a mistake, or to never be fooled by a compromised website that is normally trustworthy. While yes, the best protection against malware is to not run suspicious apps, or enter admin passwords too casually (I already have a separate admin account with a slow to type password for this purpose, I also install most apps into ~/Applications to avoid root prompts). I should probably have used the term 'malware', of which there is plenty for Macs. Are there any other free ClamAV based alternatives?Ĭlick to expand.Well, I know for a fact that this isn't true.Įven in the strictest sense of the term 'virus' there have definitely been a number of examples for macOS, though I can't think of any recent examples, almost all recent examples require for the user to run an infected app first which I think technically makes them trojans rather than viruses as such. I seem to recall that ClamXav used to be an option, but it appears to be a paid-only product now, despite just being a wrapper around the open-source ClamAV. I don't mind running one process per user account, so long as all it's doing is waiting for changes to some folder(s) I specify, i.e- nice and lightweight. I'm looking for something that doesn't require root permissions except when absolutely necessary, i.e- if I want to a run an on-demand scan of my entire system. I've recently had to reinstall macOS and I haven't yet installed any antivirus for the past few years I've been using the free version of Avast!, which has been fine, but I've never been completely comfortable with the invasive way that it operates (requiring root permission to inject itself into a bunch of places), and found I ended up disabling a lot of its features anyway.Īll I'm really looking for is something that can scan files arriving in my ~/Downloads folder, and also lets me scan other files on demand.

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