It’s exactly what you would be doing when you buy the license right away.

Create an account on the McAfee siteĪnother way to download the installer app is to create an account on the company site. So, what are you supposed to do if you don’t have a PC to install the trial? In fact, I remember that this was the main reason why I didn’t test McAfee when I was testing a dozen antiviruses for Mac. Then click on My Account under the My Info section.įrom here, I could choose a platform (Mac) and then either download an installer app or email a link to myself. Once I installed McAfee on my PC, I clicked on the Settings (gear) icon. So finally, I gave up and downloaded a trial on my PC. I spent a lot of time trying to find a DMG or PKG file that will run on Mac, but I didn’t find any.

There is a page on the website with a link to the trial version, but it’s a Windows app! It will not run on your Mac. However, if you just want to get a trial version (for 30 days), then prepare for frustration. If you are purchasing, then skip to the next step. Here are the steps I had to take: Download McAfee to a PCĭepending on which version of the program you are going to install, you may or may not need this step. I don’t know if it’s a deliberate process or the company is focused only on the Windows platform and de-prioritizes Mac users, but it took me several hours to get the product running. However, McAfee managed to overcomplicate the installation process, and you need to be a true expert in order to have the antivirus on your Mac. Usually, this requires some medium-level experience with Macs (I mean total newbies will most likely having issues), but it’s not rocket science. Since they need to have access to the low-level functions of macOS and there is no easy way to provide this access on Mac, the users end up doing some setup functions manually.

Most antiviruses have similar installation processes. The CPU usage is very high, sometimes peaks at 50%, which makes working on Mac challenging while the real-time antivirus enabled. The app only detects 90.6% of Mac malware, which is below the industry average. Overall, the McAfee Total Protection is not good for Mac. Unfortunately, the results were somewhat unexpected and underwhelming. I reviewed a dozen antiviruses for Mac in the past year, and since McAfee is a well-known brand in the cybersecurity space, I spent an entire week testing its flagship product for macOS.

Mcafee virus protection for mac