The General settings is a tab on the Settings screen in Malwarebytes for Mac version 4. This section allows you to configure how Malwarebytes interacts with your Mac device. To view this screen, click the Settings cog icon in the top-right corner of the Dashboard, then click the General tab.
General is the default tab when you open Settings. Here you can configure a number of different operations for the program. Available settings are:
- Default action for PUPs: Determines the action taken on Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs). The default option is to Quarantine PUPs, but you may choose to Skip processing instead. This would exclude PUPs from scans, but you can still quarantine them by selecting them after a manual scan.
- Automatically remove old items from Quarantine: Malwarebytes neutralizes threats and puts them into Quarantine until you either restore or delete them. Keep this box checked if you want Malwarebytes to automatically delete these quarantined items after a set amount of time. You can set the time to have Malwarebytes delete quarantined threats after 30, 90, 180, or 365 days.
- Automatically update to a new version of Malwarebytes: This allows the application to automatically download and install updates in the background as soon as they become available. This setting is checked by default.
- Automatically check for protection updates: We recommend you select this option to benefit from the most current database updates. When selected, the Check every drop-down menu allows updates to schedule for once an hour, or up to once per 24 hours.
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Hide application icon: This causes the Malwarebytes application icon in the menu not to display. This settings is unchecked by default.
- Black & White icon: This causes the Malwarebytes application icon in the menu bar to display in monochrome when selected, or in color when not selected.
- Beta Application Updates: This causes Malwarebytes to download pre-release updates in addition to normal releases. This setting is unchecked by default.
- Usage and Threat Statistics: Switch the toggle to enable the application to send anonymized data to the Malwarebytes research team. This data helps our engineers improve the product and help protect you. For more information, see the Malwarebytes Privacy Policy.
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