Beyond disk space
Malware protection
There is no scanner, and there will not be one. What you get instead is your Mac's own security state, read out and dated — a measurement you can check rather than a claim you have to trust.
Why not a scanner
A scanner is only as good as the threat feed behind it, and a feed is paid for every month for as long as the app exists. A one-time price cannot fund one. The honest choices are a subscription, or no scanner — and a scanner whose definitions quietly stopped updating is worse than none at all, because it still reports that it found nothing.
There is a second reason. macOS already runs one, for free, and has since Yosemite. Selling a second one means either a better feed than Apple's — which is a real business, not a feature — or duplicating something already there.
What the app reports instead
The Maintenance screen carries a row with no Run button, because there is nothing to run. It reads your Mac and says:
- The XProtect definition version and when macOS last installed it — taken from the system's own install history, not from the bundle's modification date, which moves for reasons that have nothing to do with the signatures.
- The XProtect Remediator version, which is the part that removes families Apple already knows about.
- Whether Gatekeeper is on, so an accidentally disabled Mac says so out loud.
Every one of those is checkable against Apple's own records. That is the difference between a measurement and a reassurance.
When a real scanner is still worth having
XProtect knows what Apple has seen. It is signature-based, so a genuinely new family can run for a while before it is covered, and it does not scan files you are forwarding for somebody else's benefit — a Windows macro, for instance. There are jobs where a real scanner with a real feed earns its subscription. It is just not something a disk cleaner should pretend to be, and a one-time price could not pay for it anyway.
What to do next: see these numbers for your own Mac. Download RefreshYourMac free, or get it on the Mac App Store.
What it costs to have an app do this
| RefreshYourMac | CleanMyMac | MacKeeper | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay once | $24.99 | €119.95 on MacPaw’s store; $89.99 for CleanMyMac X on the Mac App Store | subscription only |
| Yearly | $14.99 a year, first 7 days free | $39.99/yr on the Mac App Store; €39.95/yr on MacPaw’s store | €71.40 for the first year, 1 Mac. Their page shows it against a €119.40 list price |
| Monthly | $1.99 a month | $9.99/mo | €10.95/mo |
| Account needed | No | Yes | Yes |
Before you pay anything, both versions give you 3 free scans. CleanMyMac and MacKeeper prices read from their own pages and the Mac App Store on 27 October 2026; the full comparison is at RefreshYourMac vs CleanMyMac and MacKeeper.
Frequently asked questions
Is a malware scanner in a Mac cleaning app worth having?
A scanner is only as good as the threat feed behind it, and a feed has to be paid for every month for as long as the app exists. A scanner whose definitions quietly stopped updating is worse than none, because it still reports that it found nothing.
How do I check when XProtect last updated on my Mac?
Read it from the system’s own install history, not from the XProtect bundle’s modification date. That date moves for reasons that have nothing to do with the signatures, while the install history says when the definitions were actually installed.
What does XProtect Remediator do?
XProtect Remediator is the part of macOS’s built-in protection that removes malware families Apple already knows about. It sits alongside the XProtect definitions and Gatekeeper; macOS has run its own malware scanner, for free, since Yosemite.
What does RefreshYourMac show instead of a malware scan?
A row on its Maintenance screen with no Run button: the XProtect definition version and when macOS last installed it, the XProtect Remediator version, and whether Gatekeeper is on. Each of those is checkable against Apple’s own records.