Anyone who wanted a Mac checked for malware on the spot could start that check by hand. In the newest build of Apple’s built-in scanner, the option has quietly stopped doing anything.
The build is XProtect Remediator 163, which reached Macs on 18 September. Pressing the run button in XProCheck, or double-clicking the XProtect app inside /Library/Apple/System/Library/CoreServices, now produces no scan at all. The process starts, finishes without executing a single scanning module and quits, reporting nothing. Howard Oakley, who documented the change at the Eclectic Light Company, cannot say whether the release carries a bug or Apple meant to close the manual route for good.
What a Mac owner still controls
Automatic sweeps continue, on a timetable nobody can nudge. A regular pass is meant to happen roughly every 24 hours with the Mac on mains power, and a slower weekly sweep also waits for a power lead. Both are bound to a timer, so a set of scans can be cut short or skipped altogether. A laptop that lives on battery may go many weeks without a single sweep.
A hand-triggered run never reached the root-level files that a scheduled pass covers. It did give owners of lightly used machines a way to look for known malware instead of waiting for the schedule to come around.
With that path closed and no explanation from Apple, Oakley’s advice is blunt. If routine scanning matters on a particular Mac, its owner now has to reach for a third-party utility to get it.
