Avira Free Antivirus for mac (Free). Avira protects your mac from each OS X-based malware and threats that focus on PCs, supplying you with a solid quantity of coverage. AV-TEST additionally found that it detected one hundred of the malware that they tested, inserting it in smart company among.
The abundance of solid free antivirus solutions available on the Mac means you can be choosy about which one you download. For example, while we can appreciate Avira Free Antivirus for Mac for its relatively low impact during passive scanning when it's running in the background, that's not enough.
Unfortunately, while Avira's malware-detection score is good, it's not quite the best, even among free Mac antivirus solutions. For Mac protection without any expense, we recommend; if you can afford $40 per year, then is an even better bet for its perfect detection rates and parental controls. Costs and What's Covered As its name declares, Avira Free Antivirus comes without any price tag. For those who may want technical support and other perks, Avira also offers Avira Antivirus Pro ($44.95 per year), which bundles in software for both Mac and Windows, and the Avira Prime ($9.99 per month) subscription, which gives you access to all of Avira's paid products. Avira Free Antivirus for Mac supports the most recent two editions of macOS, which at the time of this writing were macOS 10.12 Sierra and OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
Antivirus Protection Avira protects Macs using traditional signature-based malware scanning, as well as behavioral monitoring that scans for patterns commonly seen in dangerous and unwanted files. Like most other antivirus products, Avira Free Antivirus for Mac constantly updates its malware-signature database, which receives information from the 100 million users of the company's Windows, Android and Mac software.
Avira stops PC malware on Macs from spreading across external drives and networks. In addition to routine background scans, Avira offers both on-demand and scheduled scans, and scans unopened archive files such as ZIPs. Antivirus Performance Austria's AV-Comparatives evaluation lab tested Avira's malware-detection skills and found it offered high, but not perfect, protection. In AV Comparatives' July 2017 studies, Avira Free Antivirus for Mac detected 99.1 percent of malware, which translates to catching 681 pieces of malware and failing to detect six. In comparison, Avast Free Mac Security and AVG AntiVirus for Mac caught 99.9 percent of malware (686 out of 687). Among paid options, Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac, detected 100 percent of both Mac and Windows malware.
Security and Privacy Features As is often the case with free antivirus solutions, Avira Free Antivirus for Mac is light on extras. Although it comes with a firewall (disabled by default), macOS has its own already. A USB scanner tool can be added on by upgrading to Avira Pro. While Avira does offer its SafeSearch Plus tool (free) to help you stay away from infected sites, it doesn't install the browser plugin during installation. Performance and System Impact Avira Free Antivirus for Mac had a mixed impact on system performance. We assessed the performance hit with our custom OpenOffice benchmark test, which matches 20,000 names and 20,000 addresses on a spreadsheet and measures how long it takes to finish the task.
Our test machine was a Late 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina Display, with a 2.6-GHz Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM and 70GB of data stored on a 512GB SSD. After we installed Avira Free Antivirus for Mac on our MacBook, the OpenOffice test finished in an average of 2 minutes and 24 seconds, 1.5 seconds longer than the same system took before installation. That's a passive system hit of 1.1 percent, on the lower end of the range we found among the eight products we reviewed. During a full-system scan, the OpenOffice test finished in 2 minutes and 41 seconds, signifying a performance dip of 18.25 percent, the highest we saw. AVG's 12.1 percent was the second highest we recorded, and Kaspersky's 4.5 percent the lowest. While Avira's malware-detection score is good, it's not quite the best. During Avira's quick scans, the OpenOffice test finished in 2 minutes and 37 seconds, which indicates a system slowdown of 10 percent.
That's on the high end. Avira Free Antivirus for Mac's full scans completed in an average of 30 minutes and 13 seconds, which falls in the middle of the times we recorded. By contrast, the longest time we saw was 72:45 (Kaspersky), while the shortest was 1:25 ( Bitdefender). The average for all eight Mac antivirus products tested was 36:30. Interface Avira Free Antivirus for Mac offers the same clean, modern look you see in many third-party Mac apps.
Its main window presents a system status (Protected, typically) along with buttons for starting scans, scheduling scans, your quarantine, system activity and your license (more on that later). Clicking New Scan gives you the option for a Quick scan or a full system scan, as well as a button to start the scan.
While we prefer one-click scans, this arrangement is pretty decent and consolidates the screens into a pop-up menu. The scheduled-scan page brings a drop-down sheet where you can name the days and times scans should run as well as their type (full, quick) and frequency (weekly, daily). The Quarantine button brings you to a view of any files Avira has flagged as dangerous and set aside, while the Activity button shows you a list of your most recent scans. Clicking License lets you enter the Activation Code that an Avira Pro or Avira Prime membership comes with.
Clicking the option-toggles icon in the menu bar brings you to the Real-Time Protection screen, which allows you to disable file protection (don't do it) and enable Avira's Firewall. The profile icon brings you to what I'd call the About screen. Here you can see version info and click links to the Avira Community support page, product videos and other meta-level web pages. Installation and Support After you click Download, the superlight disk image file containing Avira Free Antivirus' installer will download. After opening that, the rest of the files are downloaded. In total, it took less than 3 minutes to complete the process.
Avira's customer support is limited to its paid customers, so you'll need Avira Pro or Avira Prime for that. In lieu of that, you can search Avira's FAQ documents and community message boards.
Bottom Line Avira Free Antivirus For Mac continues to be a good option for protecting your Mac from malware; unfortunately, that's not enough. Sure, we like its easy-to-use interface, but its malware protection scores aren’t as good as what AVG Antivirus for Mac and Avast Free Mac Security offer.
Avast also causes less system impact than Avira, which makes it our top free choice. Antivirus Buying Guides.
With multi-layer ransomware protection that this Mac security software has, you will get all the protection you need. Safe Files will protect from ransomware which is used by hackers to encrypt contents of your laptop only decrypting them when you pay a certain sum of money. All your Time Machine backups are protected so no sophisticated malware can interfere with it. Annoying adware is also dealt with by this program. No more browser add-on install without your consent and unwanted toolbars will be a thing of the past. This is an antivirus that looks great and will do the job perfectly. The newest version has some cool looks but is also as effective as all its predecessors if not better.
We have ascertained this through hands-on and laboratory tests. On download and installation, you will see two main panes. The first is the free mac antivirus that ensures that you get the basic protection you need. In the basic protection pane there are two icons; computer protection and web and email protection. Both are enabled by default. In the second pane are more advanced options that you have to enable by purchasing the AVG security suite. These protect private data, protect against hacks and protect you during online transactions.
Up to 10 macs can be managed using one account. However, you can only use the web interface to control these. Another downside is that the antivirus for MacOS Sierra does not offer protection against browser extensions and does not offer email attachment protection.
The background scan it performs however does scan every file when it is open and prevents browsers from navigating websites that have malicious content. Sophos Home scans the computer and its connections every now and then when you request so and in the background as the computer is in use. It also comes with parental controls.
All these can be easily carried out thanks to the easy to use interface and remote accessibility. Full system scans take as long as several hours but this software has the least impact on the system’s operation. The main window has a “New Scan” button that when pressed begins a scan. This can either be a quick scan or full computer scan depending on what you choose in the start button drop-down menu that follows. Avira is updated frequently and benefits from information from 100 million users all over the world. Detected malware is quarantined to prevent it from spreading.
Like most other antiviruses you can set Avira to carry out scheduled scans as you wish to be it daily or weekly. There is also real-time protection that is offered by Avira which quarantines threats as they are detected.