In very rare cases, Avast may detect and block some programsor website pages as a virus, although you know for sure it’s safe. These wrong detections are called false positives. If such false-positive detection prevails after the virus definitions update, you may want to exclude the detected software or website from the Avast scan.
How to Turn OFF/Disable Avast Antivirus Temporarily August 26, 2018 By Ajay Kumar Leave a Comment turn off Avast Antivirus -Avast is one of the famous application for Anti-Virus Software developed by Avast Software for all the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Android and iOS devices.
This is a perfect fix when Avast is blocking one of your favorite programs, but you still want to run/allow it. In the past, Avast was blocking some of the most popular software (Steam for example) for a short period of time. To be fair false-positive detection happens basically to every antivirus on the market, it’s not just Avast.
- Avast Firewall comes built into its various packages, and although it’s much better than the native firewall available with Windows, it can still sometimes run into issues. You might find that there is an apostrophe sign looming over your Avast icon on the toolbar, and on opening Avast you find Avast Firewall is turned off.
- To uninstall Avast Free Mac Security, follow these steps: Open the Avast user interface. Select Avast from the menu and Uninstall Avast. Confirm by clicking Uninstall. Enter the administrator name and password for your Mac, if asked, and click OK.
- Disabling avast antivirus means to turn off all the protection of avast for some time without uninstall avast. Whether it is a quite easy process but I will tell you from a beginner.
Anyway, we strongly recommend scanning the file/webpage also through some other virus engines to make sure it’s really clean. For this, you can use a free online scanner VirusTotal. Sometimes you may think the file/URL are safe but they are actually infected and it’s not just Avast which is detecting them.
Quick Summary
- Make sure the blocked file or webpage is not malicious by testing it at www.virustotal.com
- Add it as an exception by going to Settings » General » Exclusions
- Confirm by clicking OK
Read more detailed steps and other options including screenshots below.
In this guide, you will learn how, but we strongly suggest using exclusions only when you’re an advanced user. There are three basic types of exclusions/exceptions in the Avast Antivirus 2019:
- Global exclusion list of the folder/file/program/application from being scanned at all
- Global exclusion list of the website/URL from being scanned at all
- Exclusions in the specific shield (File System Shield, Mail Shield, or Web Shield)
Global Whitelist – Exclude Specific Folder/File/Program/Application from All Avast Scans
If you want to add the exception for the specific website, domain, or URL from being scanned by Avast, follow these steps. This is so-called Global Whitelist or Exclusion List.
- Open the Avast user interface and go to ‘Settings‘ » ‘General‘
- Find the tab ‘Exclusions‘ and add specific programs to the ‘File paths‘ tab
- Added applications and/or paths will now be excluded from any Avast scanning
Adding File/Folder/Program Exception into Avast 2019
On the screenshot above you can see that application ‘FileZilla FTP Client‘ and ‘DAEMON Tools Lite‘ are excluded. Such exceptions also apply to all sub-folders on these folders as we have used ‘/*’ in the path.
Global Whitelist – Exclude Specific Website/URL from All Avast Scans
If you want to add the exception for the specific Avast shield, follow these steps.
- Open the Avast user interface and go to ‘Settings‘ » ‘General‘
- Find the tab ‘Exclusions‘ and add specific websites or URLs in the ‘Urls‘ tab. Please note ‘http://’ will be added automatically, so if you want to exclude Yahoo, just type yahoo.com. Please note you need to differentiate between ‘http://’ and ‘https://’
- Added websites/URLs will now be excluded from any Avast scanning
Adding Website/Domain/URL Exception into Avast 2019
On the screenshot above you can see that URLs ‘https://www.gmail.com‘ and ‘http(s)://.gmail.com‘ are excluded. Such exception also applies to all pages on these domains as we have used ‘/*’ in the path.
Add Exception for Specific Avast Antivirus Shield (File System Shield, Mail Shield, or Web Shield)
If you want to add the exception for the specific Avast shield, follow the steps further.
- Open the Avast user interface and go to ‘Settings‘ » ‘Active Protection‘
- Select the shield (File System, Mail, or Web) for which you want to add the exception, and click on ‘Customize’ link
- Find the menu item ‘Exclusions‘ and add the item you want to exclude from scanning by the specific Avast shield. You can also specify when the exclusion applies (for reading, writing, or executing)
- Please note that global exclusions are always applied although they aren’t listed in the specific shield. Also please note a lot of items are listed there by default
Adding Specific Shield (File System, Mail, or Web) Exception into Avast 2019
On the screenshot above, you can see many items are excluded from the File System Shield scan by default. We haven’t added any of them.
[IMPORTANT] Restart All Avast Shields to Make Exclusion Work
After you successfully add the file or webpage to exclusions you need to actually restart all Avast shields to make it work. Otherwise, Avast will keep detecting and blocking it as a threat.
- Find Avast icon in the Windows system tray (click on the top arrow)
- Go to ‘Avast shields control‘ » ‘Disable for 10 minutes‘ » confirm
- Go again back to ‘Avast shields control‘ » ‘Enable all shields‘
Restarting All Avast Shields From the Windows System Tray
Now Avast should stop detecting the added files/URLs in the exclusions. You can also simply just restart your Windows.
Report a False Positive Detection to Avast
We also strongly suggest reporting the detection you believe is a false positive directly to Avast team. They will look into it and eventually confirm the reported file, software, or website is clean.
Link to report is included on every in-product pop-up displayed when the harmful webpage or file is blocked. Just click on ‘Report the file as a false positive‘.
Avast Web Shield Has Blocked a Harmful Webpage or File Pop-up
Then you need to fill-in following simple form. In the additional info, you can add a link from VirusTotal scan. Don’t forget to check the option ‘I know what I’m doing‘ and click on ‘Submit‘.
Avast In-product Form for Reporting False Positive Detection of Files or Websites
Alternatively, you can use the official web form for reporting false positive detection.
Official Avast Web Form for Reporting False Positive Detection of Files or Websites
Additional Notes
Although we have used Avast Free Antivirus 2019 screenshots in this article, these steps are also applicable for all Avast Antivirus solutions (i.e. also for Avast Pro Antivirus, Avast Internet Security, or Avast Premier) running the latest version available.
Steps are relevant for all Windows versions – Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 (including Anniversary Update).
Managing exceptions or turning off Avast protection may leave your computer at risk.
Just tried Firefox Dev and everything returns invalid certificate issues. One possible cited cause are AV software, so I'd like to suspend Avast and see if it clears up.
Sophos For Mac
Suspend/stop - not 'turn off shields', that doesn't do much - Avast is still on the menu bar and still shows up on pgrep. At the end of the day, I don't really care about live shields anyway - more interested in scanning downloads and the like.
I guess I could look at system services and turn Avast off there, but is there no way to tell the app to shut down? Unusual to have such a badly behaved app on Macs.
edit: all the launchctl fu I tried to apply didn't work and it even re-appeared after a reboot. I think I'll have to de-install it if I want to truly stop it. Not helping my trust either with a spammy 'your system is wasting x GB storage, do you want to fix it?' popup of theirs.
As far as Avast + Firefox Dev edition goes, looking at Connection is Untrusted, I saw that the user uninstalled and reinstalled to accept the Avast cert.
So... I:
went to regular FF preferences searched for 'certificates' and exported the Avast cert.
went to FF dev version and imported the cert I had just exported. Its trust only needs to identify websites.
FF Dev works now.
Still not sure I will keep Avast around.
Uninstalled, this whole 'can't be paused or disabled' is arrogant and annoying, especially as the main reason for wanting it was on-demand scanning of downloads, not constant running.