How many Macs would a hacker hack if a hacker could hack Macs? All of them, of course. If you skip antivirus protection on your Mac, you’re aiding and abetting those malware coders. Antivirus protection for your Mac is a necessity. Avast One Gold for Mac meets that necessity and adds integrated VPN protection, defense against browser fingerprinting, data breach monitoring, and more. It can be a worthwhile upgrade from the free Avast One Basic for Mac, especially if you plan to rely on its VPN. However, you should also consider our Editors’ Choice winners Norton 360 Deluxe and Bitdefender Antivirus.Avast’s Product LinesThe Avast One software line is available in the US, as well as Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. All of Avast’s existing software remains available for download or purchase in these countries and around the world, but the Avast One line is clearly the wave of the future.
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In late 2022, Avast completed a merger with Norton, forming a new company called Gen Digital. Gen also owns AVG and Avira, but so far, all the brands continue to exist independently. Avast and AVG do use the same antivirus engine, however, and have done so since long before the merger. If you notice that lab results for these two are almost identical, that’s why.How Much Does Avast One Gold Cost?Like their Windows cousins, quite a few Mac antiviruses cost just under $40 per year for a single license. Bitdefender Antivirus, Trend Micro, and CleanMyMac are examples. You pay $60 for Sophos, but that gets you 10 licenses. Clario and Intego charge $99.99 for three licenses.
Avast One Gold doesn’t have a single-license price, and the price for five licenses has risen from $99.99 per year to $179.99 per year since my last review. That’s about $36 per device, covering devices running Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS. It’s the highest price for a five-license pack among current products.Note that Avast One Gold isn’t merely an antivirus. Your subscription gets you a broad range of protection, including five no-limits VPN licenses. With Norton, you also get five full VPN licenses, as well as 50GB of storage for your (Windows) backups, but Norton costs $119.99 per year, about two-thirds of Avast’s price. McAfee Total Protection, also with suite-level protection, costs the same as Norton for five licenses.If five licenses aren’t enough, Avast’s Family plan jumps the costs to $279.99 per year for up to 30 devices running all popular platforms. That’s not so very different from the unlimited license you get from McAfee+ for about half the cost, $149.99. If you want unlimited Norton licenses, you must spring for the top tier of Norton 360 With LifeLock at $349.99 per year. Avast One Gold’s pricing is up there with the expensive side of the competition.
It’s Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
To install Avast One Gold, you’ll need a Mac running macOS 10.13 (High Sierra). Most Mac owners keep the OS up to date, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Others need an even newer OS version. Trend Micro wants 11.0 (Big Sur), for example, while McAfee, Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac, and Webroot Antivirus for Mac all require 10.15 (Catalina).At the other end of the spectrum, a few antivirus tools still support ancient macOS versions for those who can’t (or won’t) upgrade. Intego Mac Internet Security works on 10.9 (Mavericks) or higher, while ProtectWorks AntiVirus for Mac goes all the way back to 10.6 (Snow Leopard).InterfaceFor years, Avast’s apps for Windows used a dark gray background, and the macOS apps went for a rich purple. Both those dark themes are gone in Avast One Gold. The user interface is very similar across all platforms, with a light-colored background, rounded buttons, and a pleasant, airy feel.
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Everywhere you look, there are line drawings enlivened with daubs of pastel colors. Many of the drawings include happy people who are clearly pleased to have Avast’s protection. It’s very different from the way these apps used to look.What Avast One Gold Features Are Shared With the Free Version?Naturally, users of this tool get all the features found in Avast One Basic for Mac, plus more. Look carefully at the premium-only features described below. If you don’t need them, you may be able to get away with using the free version. The biggest reason for a premium upgrade is the unlimited VPN.Antivirus protection is the same, naturally, and the labs give it excellent marks. AV-Test Institute awards it six points each for Protection, Performance, and Usability, for a perfect 18-point total. Five others reached 18-point perfection, among them Bitdefender, Norton, and Trend Micro.
Tested by AV-Comparatives, Avast achieved 100% protection against macOS-centric malware and against Windows malware. In a test using lower-risk PUAs (potentially unwanted applications), Avast detected 99%, tying with Bitdefender and quite a few others for the top score. Avast, AVG, and Trend Micro hold perfect scores in the latest reports from both labs.Avast’s comprehensive Deep Scan finished in 10 minutes—much faster than the current average of 26 minutes. When I scanned a thumb drive containing my current Windows malware samples, it identified 97% of them as malicious, the best score in recent tests. Yes, Windows malware can’t infect a Mac, but the Mac could serve to pass along those threats over the network.
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Ransomware protection works just as it does on Windows. By default, it protects a wide variety of important file types in your Documents and Pictures folders. Naturally, you can add file types or folders for extended protection. Under Windows, you can tell it to just protect all file types in selected folders; Mac users don’t get that option. When an unauthorized program tries to access a protected file, Avast warns you and asks whether to allow it. If you’re testing a new, legitimate program, go ahead and trust it. But if the warning comes as a surprise, smack that Block button.
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Avast’s Web Shield component works below the browser level, preventing your browsers from opening dangerous or fraudulent websites. Phishing frauds can be a real danger because they trick inattentive users into giving away important security credentials. When Avast detects a problem page, it diverts the browser to display a warning and also pops up a notification.
Avast detected 99% of the new real-world samples in my hands-on phishing protection test, just as its Windows version did. It scored significantly better than the phishing protection built into popular browsers. Looking strictly at Mac app scores, Avast shares second place with AVG and Malwarebytes. McAfee and Trend Micro reached a perfect 100% when their phishing protection was last tested.Clicking Explore in the simple menu at left brings up a list of available features divided into three sections: Device Protection, Smooth Performance, and Online Privacy. Lock icons denote premium-only features in the free Avast One Basic for Mac. All the Smooth Performance features are locked away, but free users have access to everything under Device Protection except for the Web Hijack Guard. This somewhat arcane feature aims to foil malicious attacks that try to hijack your PC’s DNS requests. When DNS hijacking is active, the perpetrators can undetectably divert your web requests to fraudulent sites. This is not a common occurrence, and there’s no easy way for me to test the feature.
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There are some differences, even in features that appear in both the free and premium editions. Those at the free level can use Email Guardian’s basic features to check the Mac’s built-in Mail app for malicious attachments or other dangers. Email Guardian for paying customers does quite a bit more; I’ll go into detail below.Even in the free edition, the Network Inspector feature lists all the devices attached to your network and checks for network security problems. Paying customers can choose to get a notification when a new device connects. If the new connection is suspicious, you can’t actively block it, but it’s a clue that you need to change your Wi-Fi password.
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In the Online Privacy section, only Tracking Prevention is locked for nonpaying users. Free users get access to Clear Browsing Data, Privacy Advisor, Data Breach Monitoring, and Traffic Monitor, as well as a limited version of the VPN. Even so, those who pay get more. For example, in addition to checking for exposed email addresses in known breaches, Data Breach Monitoring stays alert to new breaches and notifies you if your email is compromised.Avast Protects Your Email, TooAs noted, those using Avast’s free version get Email Guardian protection for the built-in Mail app. Avast filters out malicious attachments and other email dangers.Email Guardian in the paid edition goes way beyond that, with nonlocal protection for your webmail accounts. Once you set it up, it becomes independent of your device. Avast captures and filters your email in the cloud, so it works no matter what device you use to read your mail. No malicious attachments will reach your Inbox.The first thing you do to enable protection for a web-based email account is give Avast the email address and password for that account. For some, that requirement may be a deal-breaker. Sure, the page says, “Your password will be encrypted—even we won’t be able to see it.” But some users, myself included, just aren’t comfortable giving away passwords.
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I signed up using a throwaway Yahoo account that I use only for testing. When I last evaluated this product, that signup failed because Yahoo lacked the ability to link; it worked this time. Email Guardian supports Google, Outlook, AOL, Comcast, GMX, Mail.ru, Seznam, Web.de, Yahoo, and Yandex.You’ll have to decide what’s more important. Getting email protection on all your devices without having to install software on them is convenient. But to do so, Avast needs full access to read all your email messages and even send messages on your behalf.VPN Without LimitsAvast’s deep scan roots out any malware infestations on your macOS devices, and the File Shield real-time antivirus fends off new attacks. Data on your Mac should be safe with this protection in place. However, no antivirus can protect your data once it leaves the local computer. To protect your data as it traverses the internet, you need a VPN.A VPN creates a secure encrypted connection between your device and a secure server managed by the VPN company. No snoop or hacker, not even the owner of the Wi-Fi network you’ve logged into, can access your data in transit. The VPN server passes your traffic to whatever site you selected and sends the responses back to you through the same encrypted connection. As a privacy bonus, your network traffic seems to come from the VPN server. That means that a site can’t determine your location based on your IP address. It can also get you access to location-locked content by making it seem you’re in a different location.Avast’s free edition includes integrated VPN protection but with limits. You don’t get a choice of servers or server locations—you must use whatever the system chooses. And you can only protect 5GB of bandwidth per week. To be fair, that’s more generous than many free VPNs. The free edition of Hotspot Shield VPN allows 500MB per day—a little less than Avast. With TunnelBear VPN, nonpaying users get vastly less, 500MB per month. On the other hand, you can use ProtonVPN for free with no bandwidth limits.PCMag has evaluated the standalone Avast SecureLine VPN and found it to be a decent VPN but not an outstanding one. You can read our review to get a full understanding of Avast’s VPN technology. Briefly, it uses recommended VPN protocols and offers a widespread but somewhat sparse selection of servers (almost 60 locations in 36 countries). Its privacy policy clearly states what information it collects; in our review, we noted that it gathers more data than is needed and more than most competitors. It doesn’t offer features beyond VPN the way some competitors do, and its scores in our speed tests proved confusing, ranging from greater than average slowdown to a speedup in one test.
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With Avast One Gold, the VPN is integrated, not a separate app, but the technology is the same. You choose your country and, when available, your location within that country. Icons for each location identify those that are fastest and those that are best for streaming or torrenting. You turn on the VPN to protect your web traffic. And that’s all you really need to do. The list of locations conveniently breaks out the fastest servers, those best for streaming, and those best for peer-to-peer connections.The VPN reminds you to turn on protection when you connect to an untrusted network. Since your bandwidth isn’t capped, go ahead and configure it to connect automatically. I don’t advise turning off the untrusted network warning, though Avast does let you. You can also configure its behavior when you perform certain online activities: banking, shopping, accessing sensitive content, streaming, and torrenting. In each case, you can have it do nothing, flip on the VPN, or remind you to turn on protection manually.By default, the VPN notifies you when it connects automatically, though you can turn off this option. It supports two VPN protocols, the older IPSec standard and a proprietary protocol named Mimic; by default, it chooses between them automatically. Note that we at PCMag prefer the widely used OpenVPN protocol or the up-and-coming WireGuard protocol, both of them open-source projects.
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That’s it for VPN configuration options. You won’t find split-tunneling (the ability to send less sensitive traffic outside the VPN’s protection) like you get with CyberGhost VPN or SurfShark VPN. There’s no option for the added security of a multi-hop VPN connection. You can’t get a static IP address (useful for evading services that try to block VPN usage). Some VPNs include a kill switch, meaning they cut all connectivity if the VPN connection goes down. Not Avast, though.Norton 360 Deluxe also includes full-scale VPN protection, and PCMag rates Norton’s VPN 3.5 stars as a standalone, a notch above Avast. Yes, if you’re a VPN enthusiast, you can do better with a standalone app, but the average Avast user will do just fine with the built-in VPN.Data Breach MonitoringAs noted, even users of this app’s free edition can submit any email address to find out whether it has appeared in known data breaches. Upgrading to the premium edition lets you submit one or more addresses for real-time monitoring. If a new breach contains one of your addresses, you’ll get a notification with an opportunity to change any breached passwords.
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Avast automatically monitors the email address associated with your account. To add another email, you must prove that it’s yours by responding to a verification message. Once you’ve completed that step, Avast starts monitoring the account. If the email you just added was found in existing, known breaches, it naturally displays those.Simplified Tracking PreventionWhen your browser sends a query to a website, the website returns the requested information and then forgets all about you. For ongoing interaction, a site can place a cookie on your computer, a small text file that serves as the site’s memory. What are your preferences? Did you log in? Things like that.What are your preferences? Did you log in? Things like that.Cookies have been misused by advertisers and others who want to track your online activities. At the same time, privacy-centered organizations (including some browser purveyors) have worked out ways to defeat cookie-based tracking. Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac and various other security apps build in the ability to block such trackers.Blocking cookie-based tracking has proven successful enough that trackers now rely on a technique called browser fingerprinting. Briefly, the tracking agency gathers a vast amount of data that your browser freely offers and boils it down to a digital fingerprint that uniquely identifies you.Avast offers a standalone program called Avast AntiTrack that’s designed to foil the fingerprinters. It tweaks the data returned by your browser so that your fingerprint is always changing. In addition, it prevents cookie-based tracking, clears browser traces of online activity, and helps tune Windows for maximum privacy.
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The premium-only Tracking Prevention feature in Avast One Gold sticks to blocking fingerprinting techniques on your desktop devices. There are no settings. All you need to do is turn it on. It works deeply enough in the background that I couldn’t find a way to see it in action.Does Avast One Gold Affect Performance?Enhancing system performance doesn’t directly bear on security, but users have been known to turn off security if they think it’s bogging down performance. And hey! Everybody wants a fast computer. Installed on a Mac, Avast One Gold offers four components categorized under Smooth Performance: Disk Cleaner, App Uninstaller, Photo Cleaner, and Duplicate Finder. All four are locked away in the free edition.Like the corresponding feature in the Windows edition, Disk Cleaner scans the system for junk files, files that can be deleted to free up disk space. On my test system, the speedy scan found application cache files, files residing in the trash, log files, and downloaded files that probably aren’t needed anymore.
(Credit: Avast/PCMag)
None of the found items are checked for deletion by default. You can check off entire categories or dig in for details on a file-by-file basis. I chose to delete all the found items and thereby freed up 2.42GB of disk space. On completion, the cleanup scan reports its success in terms of how you can use that freed space, for example, “807 pictures, 2 hours of video, 605 songs.”The App Uninstaller takes a different approach to freeing up disk space. It scans your Mac for installed third-party apps and lists them with their size and the date you last used them. You can also filter the list to just see little-used apps or just jumbo-sized ones. At your command, Avast uninstalls selected apps, including “all the system files that are usually left over.” I keep my test Mac clear of excess apps, so Avast didn’t find anything I really needed to remove. The first item on its list was Avast One Gold itself!
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Do you collect endless photos on your Mac? I’m not sure how much of a problem this is, given that most users use a smartphone for pictures and store them in the cloud. But if you do have a ton of photos saved locally on your Mac, the Photo Cleaner can help you weed out too-similar ones or just plain bad photos.I don’t normally keep personal photos on my test Mac, so for testing, I copied over several hundred from another device. The speedy scan found several images it deemed “low quality,” and I agreed with its choices. It also found a half-dozen pairs of similar images. To regain space for locally stored images, just check off the ones you want to delete and click a button to remove them.
(Credit: Avast/PCMag)
Avast can also scan for duplicate files. The filenames don’t have to be the same, but unlike the similar photo search, the file content must be identical. You can review the dupes one by one or bulk-select all the oldest or newest ones for deletion. This feature exists in the Windows version as well. Unlike on the Mac, those using the free Windows app can run the scan for dupes. They just don’t get help with removal.How Safe Are You Online?The items in the scrolling menu on the Explore page are divided into three groups, as noted, but there’s a bit more to see. At the very top, above Device Protection and not in any group, you’ll find Online Safety Score.
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Your score is a number from 0% to 100%, with a brief list of good things you’re doing, as well as things you could do to raise the score. You can click to get more details in both categories. For example, on my test Mac, it griped that I didn’t have the firewall turned on, nor the FileVault full-disk encryption system. In my case, FileVault is off because it can interfere with testing, and the firewall is off because some tested antivirus tools have their own firewall. However, the average user would benefit from taking the app’s advice (and getting a higher score).McAfee does something similar with its Protection Score, though that one runs from 0 to 1,000. I’m a fan of scoring systems like this. Everybody wants a good score, right? But it’s especially important that the system provide guidance on just how to raise that score, as Avast does.Prize-Winning Protection for Your MacAvast’s technology, free and paid, gets perfect scores from independent labs, and you get several significant benefits by upgrading your Mac’s Avast One Gold installation from free to paid. Just for starters, upgrading gives you full access to all VPN features and servers with no limit on bandwidth. The excellent Avast One Gold goes beyond basic antivirus, though some competitors reach even farther into the suite realm, including our Editors’ Choice winners. Norton 360 Deluxe also includes a no-limits VPN, as well as a broad collection of features. The VPN included with Bitdefender Antivirus is limited unless you pay extra, but the app’s protection is excellent, and AutoPilot mode means you can just let it run in the background.
Pros
Excellent scores from antivirus labs
No-limits VPN
Near-perfect score in our phishing protection test
Blocks browser fingerprinters
Bonus security, privacy, and performance features
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The Bottom Line
Upgrading from Avast’s free antivirus to Avast One for Mac eliminates VPN restrictions and adds useful features such as blocking browser fingerprints, monitoring breaches for your data, and freeing up disk space.
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