Here, you can set AVG to automatically scan external drives and shared folders, as well as automatically scan Time Machine backups.

Best Antivirus Review Upgrade To A

You receive only basic protectiona term that means different things to different companiesas well as semi-regular encouragement to upgrade to a paid suite.

Best Antivirus Review Free For Mac

AVG AntiVirus Free for Mac offers very basic protection, but isnt too terrible about encouraging upgrades.

The suite protects against viruses, secures your desktop email, your web browsing, and thats it.

Those are the essentials, however, which go a long way to keeping your computer safe.

AV-Test looked at it in December, and it had a 100 percent protection rate from 145 samples.

AVG for Windows had the same score from AV-Tests 0-day, web and email threats, as well as the widespread and prevalent malware test.

AVG for Mac also got 100 percent among 585 Mac samples, and 100 percent against 500 Windows samples in the same test.

It had no trouble blocking web-based threats, as well as a number of malware samples from the Objective See library.

Interface and features When you first start-up AVG Free for Mac you get a window with four tiles.

Two of which are labeled Basic Protection and the other two are Full Protection.

The latter are for paid subscribers only and include ransomware protection, phishing protection, and a Wi-Fi inspector for monitoring all the devices on your home network.

Under the basic protection the two tiles are labeled Computer and Web Email.

Computer includes a file shield that automatically scans any new files added to your computer, and then the quarantine shows any detected malicious files.

Web protection includes the ability to block web-based attacks and unsafe downloads, and then theres the email shield for desktop email programs that scans for unsafe attachments.

When you go into each section all you see are sliders that turn the aforementioned features on or off.

The top of the main dashboard includes the typical green, yellow, and red warning system.

When somethings wrong with your system or something needs your attention, youll see it easily here.

If everythings all good the dashboard reads You have basic protection lest you forget you havent yet upgraded to AVGs premium features.

The lower part of the primary screen is reserved for scanning.

The lower left indicates when your last scan happened, the lower right indicates if the virus definitions are up to date, and in the center is the Scan Mac button.

There are also three dots, which shows the three types of scan you can do: Mac Scan, Deep Scan, and File Scan.

The Mac Scan is just another name for a quick scan and looks at the most common places where malware hides.

The Deep Scan is just that, and File Scan lets you pick specific files or folders to scan.

Theres no option to drag and drop a file or folder for scanning, though you can right-click any file and choose Scan with AVG from the context menu.

Best Free Antivirus For Mac Review