AVG Antivirus Free for Mac Review: Strong protection, heavy upsells

You may not always love the software industry, complete with its ongoing internal battles between the developers, the quality assurance department, marketing, and senior management, but there are times when things fall together as they should and a free/demo program gets it right. Enter AVG Antivirus free for Mac, which, albeit something of a teaser for the fully-featured version of the program, comes out swinging, albeit with subscription ads and notifications.

We have tested all the best Mac antivirus software options in our round-up of the Best antivirus software for Mac. We have also reviewed the full version of AVG Internet Security for Mac.

Essentially operating as the core of the fully-featured AVG Antivirus for Mac, AVG Antivirus Free, which requires macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) to run, downloads and installs easily without requiring an account to be set up or a credit or debit card to be saved with AVG Technologies. Instead, the installation runs smoothly, the application asks for confirmation to set up full disk access and network extension, and you’re ready to go. A 60-day trial period is also available, provided you enter a credit or debit card number.

AVG Antivirus Free’s home screen is honestly as simple as it gets, the unsubscribed version offering a Smart Scan that checks your computer for viruses and malware, as well as email and web protection. Hacker Attacks and Payments modules are also available, but remain inaccessible unless a subscription or free trial has been set up.

Hit the Smart Scan button and the virus definitions will update over the internet, the application scanning your internal hard drive for questionable software as well as scanning for advanced issues, wherein it gauges that your Pictures and Documents folders are prime targets for ransomware, notes that your network isn’t monitored for threats, and states that you’re vulnerable to fake websites due to possible DNS hijacking that can send you to fraudulent websites. This is where the upsell begins, the application consistently displaying an “Upgrade Now” button on its home screen.

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Still, there’s a level of customization that draws out a lot of value from this, even if it is a free version of the full software. Head into the settings, and it’s easy to set up customized scan features, such as searching through .dmg archives, .zip archives, and toolsets while also creating whitelists and exception lists.

It’s easy enough to choose between the four scan types (Smart Scan, Deep Scan, Targeted Scan, and External Storage Scan), and a handy scheduler can be set up for the day, time, and frequency you’d like to scan, along with the scan type.

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The application can also scan Time Machine backups, which I’ve never seen listed as a specific feature, and the speed is impressive, with even a Deep Scan moving at a decent clip, scanning my MacBook Pro’s solid-state drive in under 30 minutes.

Where malware and antiviral protection are concerned, AVG has honed its virus definitions and feature set into a fine-tuned blade, with the application syncing nicely with macOS’ Gatekeeper and Xprotect elements to catch just about all the malware samples I could throw at it. Yes, some malware can still pass through, but you’d have to bypass multiple warning screens, and AVG Antivirus Free is adept at blocking viruses and malware to the point that next to no malware samples found their way into my system.

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AVG Antivirus Free’s Web and Email module isn’t perfect, but it does a credible job in blocking traffic to spam, phishing, and ransomware websites. Here, I dove into my Gmail spam folder and began clicking links that no one in their right mind would click, AVG blocking access to a good number of them while still offering the option to add them to a list of exceptions if need be and noting the malware types they were trying to install. Granted, the software still allowed visits to online casinos and contest sites, and that’s its own debate waiting to happen, but there’s a viable layer of protection in place here.

While things are good with AVG Antivirus Free, there are still a few wrinkles to iron out. A well-designed progress bar, complete with a percentage counter, shows how a scan is progressing, but there’s no elapsed time counter or ETA as to when a scan might finish, which would come in handy.

The Scheduler feature does a good job, but it’s not dominant in the user interface, and you have to hunt around to see the scan that’s currently underway.

Finally, the application caught a few malware samples and warned against them, but seemed not to have removed them until I quit the AVG Antivirus Free application, launched it again, and cleaned the malware out yet again.

Should you use AVG’s Free Antivirus for Mac?

Despite these shortcomings, which could be ironed out with some QA testing and some bug fixes, there’s a good utility to be had here, even if it is free and there’s an unmistakable effort to upsell the user to the paid version.

The antiviral/anti-malware engine component is excellent, almost nothing slipped by it, and it’s easy to set your preferences for the scan you want on both internal and external volumes.

What’s present here is something focused that isn’t trying to be a jack of all trades/solution to everything, isn’t trying to recover gigabytes of data from your hard drive, isn’t trying to be your VPN, and isn’t trying to do dozens of other things. It may be a simpler approach than what you might expect these days, but it works, and it’s worth taking a look at, if only for the 60-day free trial.

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