macOS is Apple’s desktop operating system for Mac computers. It runs Siri and many intelligence features on-device and sandboxes apps through Gatekeeper, without the advertising and forced-telemetry baggage of recent Windows releases.
Reviewed by Marco Wollank
macOS
apple.com/macos 4 ratings so far*
Rate macOS: No account needed
Threat level
Covered
A covered pick. Anyone can use it as a private drop-in, with no setup or know-how. Enough for most people. Threat levels
Our take
Compared with Windows 11, macOS is the calmer choice: no ads or Recall-style screen-logging baked into the desktop, and more processing kept on the machine. It is still closed-source and phones home to Apple for some checks, so you are trading Microsoft’s telemetry for Apple’s, with better defaults but the same need to take a vendor at its word. Right for people who want a polished desktop without the Windows noise. If you want an OS you can fully audit and control, a Linux distribution is the next step.
Website at a glance
apple.com
B- score 65
Solid website security headers
Graded by Mozilla HTTP Observatory, tested 5d ago
Inspect this site yourself
Measures the security configuration of the tool's own website, not the privacy of the product itself. A strong tool can still score low here.
macOS alternatives
Fedora Workstation Fedora Workstation: User friendly and easy to setup
Ubuntu Ubuntu: User friendly and easy to setup
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Kicksecure Kicksecure is a security-hardened Debian-based Linux distribution that applies a broad set of kernel and userspace hardening settings out of the box, reducing the attack surface without requiring manual configuration. It also serves as the foundation for the Whonix anonymity OS.
Fedora Atomic Desktops Fedora Atomic Desktops (Silverblue, Kinoite, and others) are immutable Fedora variants where the base OS is read-only and updated atomically via rpm-ostree. Applications run as Flatpaks, and rollback to a prior OS image is built in.
NixOS NixOS is a Linux distribution built entirely on the Nix package manager, where the whole system (kernel, packages, services, and configuration) is declared in a single set of files. Upgrades are atomic and fully reproducible rollbacks are a built-in feature.
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