ClamXav is a graphic user interface for OS X based on Clam, a popular and powerful open-source and cross-platform antivirus.Until a few months ago you could download it for free, but now you have to buy it from the developer’ site.

1. Clam AV has traditionally lacked any real time protection. After Cisco took over the project they have a version with Immunet, but it's very basic. Nothing close to any of the commercial vendors like Kaspersky, ESET, Bitdefender and so on. Also Clam AV detection rate for in the wild has not been that great.
2. ClamXav is an antivirus created for Mac. This utility helps you remove various types of malware threats from your computer, has simple to configure settings, and immediately gets the job down without slowing down the performance of your Mac in the process.

Protecting your computer from the latest threats on the internet is a big deal, more so than at any time in the past. Cyber criminals are becoming cleverer and far more organised. They are constantly developing new tricks and new malware, designed to cause harm to your computer, your bank balance, or both.

There was a time when these criminals only went after the big fish and that meant targeting computers using the Windows operating system. Now, however, the Mac is growing in popularity and so presents itself as a juicier target.
If you use a Mac you may mistakenly believe that you are immune to viruses.

You are not.

New threats are emerging that target Apple’s machine and you need to be prepared to meet them. You need an antivirus program for your Mac.

Here Are 5 Antivirus Programs For The Apple Mac

In no particular order –

ClamCour Antivirus:

Viruses can attack your computer via emails, so ClamCour is like a courier filter which will allows Clam Antivirus to scan incoming mail for viruses and it rejects the mail if the check is positive.

With version 0.3.8 you can effectively detect and delete viruses found in your mail.

Perhaps one of the best things about ClamCour is the fact that it is freeware – download here.

Agax Antivirus:

Agax Antivirus for MAC is freeware software too.

It has been around for years and may not be suitable for newer versions of Mac OS but you can get it here.

I don’t know about today but it was certainly one of the best antivirus applications for the MAC in years gone by.

Agax provides both standard virus-scanning facilities and more advanced background protection, so there is no chance for your computer to get infected in the first place.

Agax contains an additional feature called defender which is an antivirus extension.

It utilises these features to detect and delete viruses from infected files.

iAntivirus for MAC:

iAntivirus is one of the top antivirus for MAC OS and a freeware application as well.

iAntivirus protects your computer from web threats by providing comprehensive system scanning and real-time protection to ensure your Mac remains safe and virus free.

It comes with smart automatic updates and uses little in the way of resources.

McAfee Virus Scan:

McAfee produce on of the most popular antivirus programs for Windows and so it is no surprise that they also have a Mac offering too.

It is one of the best antiviruses for Macintosh as well.

McAfee VirusScan For Mac guards against all types of viruses and malicious code, even new unknown threats.

The Mac has an excellent feature called McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator which allows you to use this McAfee product to efficiently manage all clients on your network that are protected by Virus Scan.

VirusScan has many good features, including –

• It is very easy to use and has a user friendly interface.
• Virus databases are updated with a single click.
• Virus scanning with McAfee is very reliable and accurate.

Norton Antivirus:

Norton Antivirus is another familiar name when it comes to computer/internet security.

Norton Antivirus for Mac uses a virus database to automatically update itself so that it can detect and repair the most recently discovered Macintosh viruses.

This antivirus program is very easy to download and quick to install.

This one will cost you and can be found here.

Personally, I’m not a Mac user so I can’t recommend which of the above is best or even whether they are effective at all but if you need convincing about the need to protect your Mac from malware then I recommend you watch the following video –

If you have any feedback on these antivirus programs, or alternative Mac antivirus, then please share your knowledge via the comment form below.

If you found this page looking for antivirus for a Windows machine then check out the best 10 antivirus for 2010.

Related posts:

1. The Top 5 Antivirus Programs For Windows 7 Which is your favourite antivirus program for Windows 7?...
2. The 10 Golden Rules For Avoiding Viruses Like A Mac User Do you want to use a computer without getting viruses, spyware and other nasty surprises?...
3. McAfee Antivirus As any good antivirus product should be, it is equipped to deal with the spread of viruses, be they from emails or any other avenues. McAfee also deals with worms...
4. For This Week’s Homework Please Bring An Apple Mac, Your Resume And A Strong Cup Of Coffee 7 short, and not so short, articles I've read this week....

I'm running ClamXav Sentry as 'launch agent' with ClamAV antivirus scanning engine of my own custom build.
I've tested for building ClamAV (from version 0.90.x to version 0.103.x) on Mac OS X 10.4 through macOS 11.0 Big Sur.
I'm running the latest stable release ClamAV 0.103.0 on macOS 11.0 Big Sur now.
ClamAV 0.103.0 is available on the Download page of ClamavNet, and the release note is here!
When you want to build ClamAV-devel from the Git sources, autotools are now requied.
For further information, see the following section:
'How to install ClamAV®-devel from the Git sources on macOS'.

This memorandum contains as below:
・ Memorandum 1: Building ClamAV 0.103.x on OS X 10.10 Yosemite through macOS 11.0 Big Sur
・ Memorandum 2: Building ClamAV 0.99.x on OS X 10.10, 10.11, 10.12 and macOS 10.13 High Sierra
・ Memorandum 3: Building ClamAV 0.98.7 on OS X 10.10 Yosemite and 10.11 El Capitan
・ Memorandum 4: Building ClamAV on Mac OS X 10.4 (Intel)
・ Memorandum 5: Building ClamAV on Mac OS X 10.4 (PPC)
・ Memorandum 6: Building ClamAV on Mac OS X 10.6 through OS X 10.9 Mavericks
・ Memorandum 7: Running clamd and freshclam as daemon
・ Memorandum 8: Running ClamXav Sentry as 'launch agent' on Mac OS X 10.6 and later…
・ Memorandum 9: Update ClamXav's own Virus Database and running RunFreshclam as daemon
・ Memorandum 10: Running ClamXAV version 2.18.x with B.Y.O. ClamAV antivirus scanning engine
・ Links…


1. Requirements to build ClamAV 0.103.x is very much the same as building ClamAV 0.102.x.
2. Requirements to build ClamAV 0.102.x are almost the same as building ClamAV 0.101.x. and ClamAV 0.100.x.
The differences are as follows:
LLVM current version is 10.0.x, though ClamAV 1.02.x supports only LLVM =< 3.6.x.
The ClamAV team is not maintaining repackaged LLVM now, and they may drop the repackaged LLVM entirely
and deprecate support for system-installed LLVM in favor of the bytecode interpreter.
So LLVM Libraries are not necessarily required to build ClamAV 0.102.x, I think.
I am now configuring ClamAV 0.102.x to disable LLVM as follows:
Of course you can configure ClamAV 0.102.x to enable LLVM as before:
3. Requirements to build ClamAV 0.102.x and ClamAV 0.101.x are almost same as before.

4. Differences



ClamAV 0.99.x contains major new features such as YARA rules, PCRE - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions and so on.
To support YARA and ClamAV logical signatures, the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library is required.
If PCRE isn't installed on your system, you will get a warning message like this while running freshclam.
1. To ensure the PCRE library:
1) Install PCRE - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions.,

Clam Mac Antivirus Reviews

2) When compiling ClamAV 0.99.x, it fails with an error:

3) To avoid this failure, simply set CPPFLAGS:
4) And add this configuration option when configuring ClamAV: --with-pcre=/usr/local/pcre2.
2. To compile ClamAV 0.99.x on OS X 10.10 Yosemite or on OS X 10.11 El Capitan and macOS 10.12 Sierra,

3. Configure ClamAV 0.99.x on OS X 10.10 Yosemite as follws:
4. Configure ClamAV 0.99.x on OS X 10.11 El Capitan and macOS 10.12 Sierra as follws:

Built-in LLVM of ClamAV 0.98.7 and 0.99.x are not compatible with GNU C++ on OS X 10.10 Yosemite and 10.11 El Capitan.
So ClamAV 0.98.7 and 0.99.x built on OS X 10.10 Yosemite or on OS X 10.11 El Capitan have major issues:
- Clamd crashes repeatedly throwing 'Segmentation Fault: 11'
- Clamscan also crashes and fails to scan…
- Freshclam fails to load new database logging:

These problems can be avoided by installing official LLVM.
Versions of LLVM beyond 3.6 seem not to be currently supported in ClamAV, so you should install LLVM 3.6.2.
1. Installing LLVM 3.6.2 Pre-built Binaries
2. To use LLVM installed into /usr/local as a system library instead of the ClamAV's built-in LLVM JIT,
add configuration option as following:
3. Configure ClamAV 0.98.7 on OS X 10.10.x Yosemite as follws:


Apple introduded a new security feature SIP: System Integrity Protection (rootless) to OS X 10.11 El Capitan, so in /usr directory
OS X 10.11 El Capitan has the different file composition from OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
While configuring ClamAV 0.98.7 on OS X 10.11 El Capitan, configuration fails with an error:
1. To solve this configuration issue, install LibreSSL.
Setting search path:
You can confirm the installation:
2. But it's not still sufficient to succeed building.
Building fails with an error:
3. To succeed building ClamAV 0.98.7 on OS X 10.11 El Capitan, set CPPFLAGS:
4. Configure ClamAV 0.98.7 on OS X 10.11 El Capitan as follws:
5. Notes


If you use OpenSSL 1.1.1x to compile ClamAV 0.99.x, add more this configuration.

In last update, Clam AntiVirus developer team introduced JIT compiler to ClamAV® 0.96.
Apple gcc (version: 4.0.1 build: 5370) in Mac OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) failed to build ClamAV 0.96.x and 0.98.x with JITcompiled in.
With a brief struggle I found a good solution that I will tell you here.
1) First, install LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) and LLVM-GCC 4.2 Front End.
2) Second, add this configuration option: --enable-llvm.
Then you can build ClamAV 0.96.x and 0.98.x with JIT compiled in and use new features included in anti-virus toolkit.

Install LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) and LLVM-GCC 4.2 Front End
1. Installing LLVM-GCC 4.2 Front End Binaries
2. Setting search path
3. Installing LLVM 2.3

Install MacPorts and the packages
1. Installing MacPorts

2. Installing the packages: bzip2
3. Maintaining MacPorts and installed packages

Compile ClamAV 0.98.x and Install
1. Modify /shared/output.c & output.h to avoid compiling error. (Only needed for compiling ClamAV 0.98.1)
2. ./configure (version 0.98 and 0.98.1)
3. ./configure (version 0.98.3 or later)
4. Make, make check and install ClamAV

To compile ClamAV 0.96.3 or later, bzip2 (Version 1.0.6) that fixes CVE-2010-0405 is required.
Mac OS X has bzip2 (Version 1.0.5) built-inand it is outdated, so you get WARNING as follows while running configuration command.
To solve this problem on Mac OS X 10.4, you can install bzip2 (Version 1.0.6) using MacPorts and add this configuration option:
export LDFLAGS='-L/opt/local/lib' as follows.
Apple has patched the CVE-2010-0405 bug on Mac OS X 10.6.7 but not on Mac OS X 10.4.11.

To compile ClamAV 0.98.3 or later, OpenSSL (Version 0.98y or above including the X509_VERIFY_PARAM function) is required.
Mac OS X 10.4 has OpenSSL 0.9.7l built-in and MacPorts fails to build OpenSSL, so you have to install OpenSSL 0.9.8zh.
1. Install OpenSSL 0.9.8zh
2. Setting search path

Compile ClamAV 0.99.x and Install
To compile ClamAV 0.99.x on Mac OS X 10.4, in addition to installing LLVM Front End, MacPorts, bzip2 and OpenSSL the PCRE library is required as pointed out above.
1. Install PCRE - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions.

2. ./configure
3. Make, make check and install ClamAV

PPC users have to install LLVM-GCC 4.2 Front End Binaries for PPC and configure ClamAV 0.96.x and 0.98.x with different configuration.

Install LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) and LLVM-GCC 4.2 Front End
1. Installing LLVM-GCC 4.2 Front End Binaries
2. Setting search path
3. Installing LLVM 2.3

Install MacPorts and the packages
1. Installing MacPorts

2. Installing the packages: bzip2
3. Maintaining MacPorts and installed packages

Compile ClamAV 0.98.x and Install
1. Modify /shared/output.c & output.h to avoid compiling error. (Only needed for compiling ClamAV 0.98.x)
2. ./configure
3. Make, make check and install ClamAV

GNU C++ and bzip2 (Version 1.0.6) are installed on Mac OS X and later, so you can simply build ClamAV 0.96.x and 0.98.x with JIT compiled in and use new features included in anti-virus toolkit.

1. On Mac OS X 10.7, after installing Xcode 4.3 in /Applications, you should install the Command Line Tools:

2. Run these commands to make sure that everything is pointed in the right place.

Compile ClamAV 0.98.x and Install
1. ./configure
2. Make, make check and install ClamAV

Compile ClamAV 0.99.x and Install
1. To compile ClamAV 0.99.x, the PCRE library is required as pointed out above.

2. ./configure
3. Make, make check and install ClamAV


1. I'm running clamd and freshclam as 'launch daemon' managed by:

2. Edit clamd.conf and freshclam.conf for using ' daemons'.
3. Set appropriate permissions for ClamXav and ClamXav Sentry.
4. Notes




1. When running ClamXav Sentry as 'launch agent', ClamXav Sentry keeps alive.

2. On Yosemite and El Capitan, I'm using this org.clamXavSentry.plist file to avoid ClamXav Sentry's annoying error:
3. Notes


1. Now ClamXav and ClamXav Sentry use combined official and its own virus database as below:
2. To get and update ClamXav Virus Database,

3. When you launch ClamXav 2.8.9.1 and update virus definitions, ClamXav logs follwing error:



1. I'm now running RunFreshclam as 'daemon' instead of freshclam daemon managed by:
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.clamXav.runfreshclam.plist
2. Edit freshclam.conf for using RunFreshclam ' daemons'.
3. Set appropriate permissions for RunFreshclam (ClamXav version =< 2.8.x).
4. Checking and updating virus definitions:



1. ClamXav has a new engine install and uninstall mechanism since version 2.9.

2. Steps to satisfy the requirements for ClamXAV Version 2.19.3 (3715):
1) make empty file called 0.100.1_update_08 inside /usr/local/clamXav/
2) extract gfslogger and RunFreshclam from ClamXAV.app/Contents/Resources/clamavEngineInstaller.pkg
3) place those files into appropriate directory:


5) Set appropriate permissions at /usr/local/clamXav for ClamXAV 2.19.x.
3. Now you can run ClamXAV Sentry 3.19.x as 'launch agent' and run RunFreshclam as 'launch daemon' with no issues.

4. Important Notes

Clam Mac Antivirus Vpn