Question about Safari and downloads

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Level 2

313 points

Question about Safari and downloads

Hello everybody, simple question, does anyone know if Safari has protection on MacOS against malicious files and stuff like that? i was thinking about switching to Safari after using Chrome for a really long time considering the load times for me on Safari are surprisingly faster than Chrome despite my really fast wifi and also how much more efficient it is but the main reason why i used Google Chrome for a long time was because i knew exactly what was going on with downloads and if i slipped up then Chrome would block the download and say it is malicious or something, does anyone know if Safari has this same thing?

(also, just for clarification, i am asking about safari for Big Sur on a MacBook Pro, and also to clarify another thing, on chrome it would say "this file ~" so and so and explain why the download was blocked and it would allow you to say "continue" or "keep" in case this was a mistake and i'm wondering if safari has a similar thing to this)

MacBook Pro

Posted on Nov 16, 2020 11:28 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Chris_D13

Community Specialist

Nov 24, 2020 3:38 PM in response to Joshua p.

Greetings Joshua p.,

Thanks for visiting the Apple Support Communities! It seems you're curious if Safari will alert you about possible malicious file downloads.

With OS X Snow Leopard v10.6 and later, Safari uses a process for detecting malware, and will alert you if it detects malware in files downloaded with Safari. Check out the information in the following article:

About the "Are you sure you want to open it?" alert (File Quarantine / Known Malware Detection) in OS X - Apple Support

Kind regards.

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Answer 2

Ronasara

Level 6

15,013 points

Nov 24, 2020 4:11 PM in response to Joshua p.

You pose a good question. First, the Apple operating system can not be infected with a virus. Not ever. Second, it is possible to get malware when doing downloads from some sites. This can be easily cleared by installing and running the free app Malwarebytes occasionally. Note: it is NOT an antivirus app that will slow down and harm your operating system. And you can get malware with any browser by visiting any site that includes it in their downloads. I hope this is helpful.

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