McAfee down? Current outages and solutions
McAfee seems to be online
How to fix problems with McAfee
Start with the outage graph above. Security products fail in a way that blocks everything else, so a broken antivirus or firewall often looks like a broken internet connection.
- Check whether McAfee is blocking your connection rather than failing
- Confirm your subscription or licence has not lapsed
- Look for a pending update that has not finished installing
- Restart your device - it clears more temporary faults than it has any right to
- Sign out of McAfee and sign back in
- Try McAfee on mobile data instead of Wi-Fi, or the other way round
Frequently asked questions about McAfee
Am I unprotected while McAfee is down?
Usually not entirely. Local protection normally keeps working when the cloud side is unavailable; what stops is updating and reporting. Take more care with unknown links and downloads until it recovers.
Should I uninstall it to get online?
No. Disabling security software to work around an outage leaves you exposed for far longer than the outage lasts. Wait, or use a different network.
How do I know if McAfee is down for everyone?
Look at the outage graph above. A sudden spike in reports means the problem is on the McAfee side and there is nothing to fix at your end. A flat graph points at something local - your connection, your device, or your account.
McAfee is down. What can I actually do?
When the reports are widespread, waiting is the honest answer - the service is being restored by people who already know about it. Before you settle in, it is worth checking your internet connection and reloading McAfee once, because that rules out the handful of causes that look identical from your side.
Why is McAfee working for other people but not for me?
Outages are often partial. They can hit one region, one platform, or one group of accounts while everything else carries on. Your own connection, an old app version or a cached login can also produce a problem only you can see.