F-Secure Total for Mac Review – Updated to 2023

Some security products that offer both Windows and macOS versions seem to spend the same amount of time and resources on both versions. Others prefer the Windows version more strongly, leaving the Mac edition devoid of certain features and options. Such is the case with F-Secure Total for Mac, which seems like a full-featured security program at first glance, but doesn’t quite live up to its Windows counterpart.

Facility

To use F-Secure Total, you can select one of the paid subscriptions upfront or opt for the 30-day free trial, all of which require you to create an account. The trial requires no credit card and even gives you free technical support if you need it. On the main screen, you are asked if you want to add your own device, your child’s device, or someone else’s device. Choosing your own or a child’s device then allows you to download the macOS version of the software.

A wizard guides you through installation and drops you off at the program’s main screen where you can review the various security features – Viruses and Threats, Password Vault, Privacy VPN, ID Monitoring and Secure Browsing. The software also tries to help you with specific recommendations, such as setting up password vault and enabling VPN.

Features

Your first task will probably be to hunt for malware. Click the Scan button to run a full scan that checks your entire system. Clicking on the Viruses and Threats link takes you to another screen where you can scan only specific folders. Surprisingly, there are no options to run a quick scan or even to schedule a scan. (The Windows version allows you to run a quick scan). Here you can also check for virus definition updates and submit a sample of an infected file to the company for analysis.

F-Secure provides real-time antivirus and antispyware scanning to automatically block malware. You can exclude specific folders and files from real-time scanning and temporarily disable scanning if it interferes with software installation or another process.

To augment regular antivirus scanning, F-Secure provides an option called DeepGuard, which monitors applications for any changes that indicate malware infection. This option already includes many items in the list, but you can add the names and locations of other apps to monitor.

Next, you might want to set up identity monitoring to check your email address for data breaches among your online accounts. You can add up to 10 addresses as well as other items including username, phone number, social security number, bank account number, credit card number and passport number .

VPN is another defense you would probably want to enable, especially when using unprotected networks. By default, the VPN selects a location that offers the best possible connection. But you can switch to another location, including several in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. You can also add your own home network as a trusted network to allow access to local resources such as printers and scanners.

You can manually turn on the VPN or set it to turn on every time you log into your Mac. The VPN also includes tracking protection to prevent advertisers from monitoring your online activity and a kill switch to quickly cut off all internet traffic if the connection goes down. By default, F-Secure uses OpenVPN as the VPN protocol, which should suffice in most situations. You can also switch to OpenVPN (TCP) or IKEv2, both briefly described in the program.

Next, a safe browsing option lets you install a browser extension that aims to block harmful web pages. The extension supports Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge (via the Chrome Web Store). When Safe Browsing is active, the extension attempts to block phishing sites and other harmful pages. You can also tell it to block sites considered untrustworthy or those that contain prohibited content. Additionally, you can manually add sites you don’t want to block and submit an example URL that you think is malicious.

Finally, F-Secure offers a password vault that creates and stores secure credentials for all your accounts. To get started, you are first prompted to create your master password. Rather than entering that password every time you need to access the vault, you can use Touch ID on your MacBook.

To add your account credentials, import an existing list from Chrome, Firefox, Edge, LastPass, Dashlane, or another program or manually create a login with username, password, and other necessary details. An autofill option automatically enters your vault password on a stored site and will offer to save a password you create. However, there is no password suggestion option like you find in most password managers, so you have to come up with your own complex passwords.

The required Password Vault extension officially supports Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Safari is not yet supported, although F-Secure told me it is in the works. The vault will also analyze your stored passwords to show which ones are strong, weak, or reused.

Performance

Browsing the EICAR test virus website triggered a message that the site was considered unsafe. To go ahead with allowing access to the site, I tried downloading the text files eicar.com and eicar. Both were automatically deleted but without any notification from F-Secure. I was able to download and extract both eicar zip files. During extraction, the test malicious files in the archive were deleted. A manual scan eventually destroyed both zip files. Unfortunately, F-Secure doesn’t allow you to review blocked or deleted malicious files, and I couldn’t find any settings that would quarantine files instead of deleting them.

A December 2022 review by AV-Test gave F-Secure SAFE for macOS a score of 4.5 out of 6 for protection and 5.5 out of 6 for usability.

Price and availability

F-Secure Total costs $119.99 / £99.99 for five devices, with the first year discounted to $69.99 / £44.99. If you want to protect a single Mac, it’s $89.99 / £69.99 ($59.99 / £34.99 after the discount).

This gives full access to iOS apps as well as Mac ones, and of course Android and Windows ones if needed, and multi-device setup is handled via F-Secure web accounts.

Depending on the number of Macs or other devices to be protected, F-Secure Total can be quite expensive. Remember though that F-Secure Safe is available, and cheaper, if you don’t want the VPN or identity protection. F-Secure has no problem with you protecting devices belonging to other people, although everything is of course managed through your own account.

Check out the alternatives in our roundup of the best antivirus software for Mac.

Verdict

F-Secure for Mac seems to have all the right components that would make it an effective product. But given that some key options are missing or missing, and the program costs $59.99 / £34.99 per year, even with the one-device discount, the Mac version should be more capable and better designed.