M1 Mac Kernel Panics

28 October 2021

If you have ClamXAV on your new M1 Mac, and have been experiencing unexpected restarts of your computer, please continue reading!

Over the past few months, a small minority of ClamXAV customers have reported kernel panics on their new M1 Macs (a kernel panic can be identified by a pink screen on the computer, followed by a sudden shut down and restart).

We would like to make it clear that, even though a ClamXAV process is named in the logs from the kernel panic, ClamXAV does not interact with the computer’s kernel directly, so a bug within ClamXAV cannot be the direct cause.

Our personal experience further supports this, as none of our staff members with M1 Macs have been able to replicate the kernel panics, even though they are using ClamXAV on M1 Macs. However, we recognise that this is an important issue, and we know that it is an important one to solve. This is why we are working closely with Apple, and with our customers who have reported kernel panics, to track down the cause of this issue.

If you experience a kernel panic on your M1 Mac, please let us know, via our support email: support@clamxav.com. Once you contact us, we will send you a list of steps that you can take to provide us with the necessary information about the kernel panics.

More importantly for our customers, we will also provide instructions on steps that can be taken to ensure the kernel panics will not recur, until a more permanent solution can be found.

Update 8th November 2022:

It would appear that this issue was finally resolved in macOS 13. If you have this issue, please update to macOS 13 Ventura. If you still experience kernel panics after updating to macOS 13 Ventura, please contact us to let us know.

Update 20th December 2021:

We believe Apple have identified a fix for this issue, to be included in a future update to macOS. In the meantime, you can work around the issue by following these steps:

  1. Update to ClamXAV 3.4
  2. Go to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy.
  3. Open the Privacy tab, and scroll down to Full Disk Access.
  4. REMOVE the item marked uk.co.canimaansoftware.ClamXAV.HelperTool (note, it’s not enough just to untick it. You need to select it and press the [-] button at the bottom of the list)
  5. Launch ClamXAV again and follow the prompts to enable Full Disk Access
  6. Ensure uk.co.canimaansoftware.ClamXAV.HelperTool has reappeared, and is ticked.
  7. Restart your computer (don’t skip this step!)

Update 5th November 2021:

Evidence suggests that updating your computer to macOS 12.0.1 may help