Do Macs need an antivirus?

[JamesD]

I’ve just bought a Mac for the first time.

I hear conflicting things about whether these need antivrius. It is something I have always done on all my Windows computers over the years.

After asking on Facboook, one of my friends has said absolutely not, another runs Norton for Mac on hers.

So is there a clear answer to this?

 

[root]

Hello @JamesD, welcome to Computer Forums 👋

Personally I don’t believe Macs require antivirus software. With that said I haven’t owned one for several years. The operating system is inherently more secure than Windows, but it’s not totally immune - malware is still developed for Macs, they’re just nowhere nearly as widely targeted and normally it doesn’t cause as much damage as it does on Windows.

A lot of it comes down to how much protection you feel you need - did you use the built in Windows antivirus previously or were you using something like Norton/McAfee/Avast etc?

 

[Philtrum]

As a Mac user since the original iMac in 1998, I haven’t ever bothered with antivirus.

Never had a problem.

As long as you are sensible with what you download, don’t open unexpected email attachments or load software from strange sites then you should be fine, MacOS has a lot of protection built in (maybe even too much now but not a bad thing) that will give lots of warning signs that what you are about to do could harm your computer.

 

[JamesN]

As we all knows that Apple have good track record of security of OS and Mac comes with great security features. Good thing is that apps are also secured so you only need to make sure that you don’t download something which is not trusted one. You may never need a antivirus on mac.