ClamXav for Mac Review

You could think that ClamXav sports a clean interface, but unfortunately there’s not much more to see.

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.

ClamXav has two main features: a thorough scan of your hard disk, and a real-time warden called CalmXav Sentry. Unfortunately, the antivirus and Sentry don’t talk one another, so if Sentry catches up any unusual activity from a file on your HD, you have to launch a full scan before you can point out the malicious file, which is disheartening. Furthermore, there’s no obvious method to eliminate any threat: ClamXav trusts you to use the contextual menu. The software doesn’t offer any firewall feature either.

A nice touch is that you can use whatever antivirus engine you like, you just have to tell ClamXav to use it. Although it’s a classy move from its developer, we don’t think a typical user can take advantage of this feature.

If you have any previous version, when ClamXav was free, you can still use it (for its database will be updated anyway), but if you’re in the market for an antivirus for your Mac, you’d better keep searching.