McAfee Endpoint Security is an anti-virus / malware protection utility and a tool that can significantly slow down your Mac. It's typically deployed in a corporate setting which makes it impossible for you as the user to disable it temporarily. At times however, I find myself needing to disable it (temporarily) - for example when doing large deployments/builds that compile vast amounts of code. In this case I think it's quite justified to have endpoint security disabled because it's not adding anything and is simply slowing down a build.


Luckily, since Macs are Unix based, the average user has a lot more control than on a Windows computer. So here's how to remove Endpoint Security...first you need to open the Terminal app and run the following command...


The above will ask you to enter your password and if everything is successful, the following output is produced...




That's not quite the end though. The agent services also require uninstallation. For this, there is a separate script and command to run...


The following output should be produced...


...and finally unload the launch agents...


This completely removes Endpoint Security. As a word of caution - I do not recommend doing this as a permanent solution, especially if your corporate policy requires this software to be installed. However, as I said at the start of this article - removing it temporarily to get through intensive tasks is ok in my view (just remember to reinstall it!)

-i