These approaches have been tested on modern versions of Mac OS, though it may not work in earlier versions. Optionally, you can trigger a manual update of the xprotect and Gatekeeper software update mechanism in Mac OSĪs mentioned, the method for macOS Catalina and Mojave will also show you the Xprotect update install date and time as well as the Xprotect version, which can be valuable information for sysadmins, IT workers, infosec, and general administrators.Hit return key and you will see something like the following, which indicates the vision number of Xprotect as well as the source and when the install date of that Xprotect version was:.

System_profiler SPInstallHistoryDataType | grep -A 5 'XProtectPlistConfigData' Check XProtect for MacOS High Sierra (10.13.x) and Sierra (10.12.x):ĭefaults read /System/Library/CoreServices/XProtect.bundle/Contents/Resources/ Version Open the Terminal application (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and enter the following command string on a single line to read the contents of the XProtect plist and export the version number:Ĭheck XProtect Version on MacOS Catalina (10.15.x) & MacOS Mojave (10.14.x) and later:.The following commands are slightly different depending on the version of MacOS in use, use which is appropriate for your system software release. How to Check the XProtect Version on a Mac We’ll show you how you can check which Xprotect version is on a Mac via the command line, this can be particularly useful for remote administration tasks using the ssh client, but it can be just as helpful to check XProtect versions on a local machine as well. Advanced users may wish to know what version of Xprotect definitions is installed on a Mac.

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