Do Apple iOS products require antivirus apps?

To expand a bit, there are not, and never has been a virus that can affect iOS. None. Zero. Nada. As Niel noted, iOS is sandboxed. One app cannot so much as touch another app. Meaning, any anti-virus app would only be able to check itself. Which of course makes it pretty useless for the name the app has.

What all AV software you find on the App Store does in iOS is everything they can think of to worry the user with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), by cramming everything in them iOS allows.

1. VPN (which is not security software of any kind). VPNs are very, very good though at collecting marketing data from everything you do online, making you LESS secure.
2. Warning you of possible scam emails or texts.
3. Alerting you to lame stuff like iOS is not up-to-date.
4. Clearing cache data and cookies, which have nothing at all to do with security.

And other useless, similar things.

Heck, I just looked for antivirus on my iPhone 14 Pro to see what Norton said it could do.

In a nearly outright lie, they have a screen shot that says One-Tap Virus Scanner. Below that, it shows three results. One of which is, 2 threats found under System Scan. iOS is cryptographically sealed. Not only will Norton (or any AV software) never, ever find anything there, no crook can put anything there without great effort.

What is that effort? Nation state developed malware that costs bare minimum, $250,000 per device to attempt infecting. Most known such attacks are over 1 million per device. Unless you're an extremely important person known to have very valuable info only on your iPhone or iPad, you are not and never will be a target.

In terms of virus threats to iOS devices, the big threat these days is not from actual viruses – but from "phishing" that preys upon users' fears that their devices are infected with viruses.

Criminals will use all forms of electronic communications known to man to lie through their teeth to try steal your money by

• Tricking you into paying for an app that will do nothing to address the non-existent "virus" threat, or
• Tricking you into calling them and giving them your financial information so they can rip you off directly

The "Your machine is infected with 13 Trojan viruses!!! Download XXX "security" app (or call YYY "tech support" number), or some variant thereof, is a very common scam.

See: Recognize and avoid social engineering schemes including phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams – Apple Support

In addition to the other replies, if you add any third party anti-virus programs, they can cause problems with Apple's built in defenses. Please avoid using any.

The defences are built into the OS; Apple's sandboxing prevents malware from affecting it, and any scanners from checking files other than their own documents.

(262938)

And if so, which antivirus app is best to use?

None

True

still true