Xprotect

XProtect is the antivirus technology built into macOS, using signatures that Apple updates automatically to detect and remove known malware. The first layer of defense is designed to inhibit the distribution of malware, and prevent it from launching even once—this is the goal of the App Store, and Gatekeeper combined with Notarization. This process can very quickly block malicious apps because checks for revocation tickets happen in the background much more frequently than even the background updates that push new XProtect signatures. macOS includes built-in antivirus technology called XProtect for the signature-based detection and removal of malware. It is recorded as supporting malware detection.

Current Version

5368

Product Page

support.apple.com/…/protecting-ag…

Market

ConsumerEnterpriseSMB

Licence

Free

Price

Free

Record Created

2026-08-20

Last Updated

2026-10-28

Apple does not sell security software. The protections listed here are built into macOS and shipped with every Mac, which makes them the baseline any third-party product on that platform is competing against rather than products a buyer chooses. Three of them appear in this index. XProtect is the malware signature system Apple updates silently in the background; Gatekeeper checks that an application has been signed by an identified developer and notarised by Apple before it will run; and the built-in firewall controls incoming connections. Alongside them sit System Integrity Protection, the signed system volume and app sandboxing, which are architectural rather than detection features and are not listed separately. Apple publishes no detection rates and does not enter its protections into the public test laboratories, so the laboratory columns here will stay empty for them. That is not a gap in the product: it is a company that treats platform security as part of the operating system rather than as a product to be benchmarked. Vendor page →

Website

apple.com

Country

🇺🇸United States

Headquarters

🇺🇸Cupertino, United States

Year Established

1976

Customers

500K organisations

Users

2.5B devices protected

Revenue

$416.2B (2025)