How to Turn Off Avast Easy (Temporarily or Completely Disable it)

If you’re using Avast antivirus and you want to know how to disable it, or any of its features, or if you want to remove it completely, in this guide, we’ll show you how.

While an antivirus program like Avast can be helpful in blocking harmful malware or viruses from getting onto your computer, at other times they can block you from running programs or applications that you know are safe, or they were preinstalled on your computer and you want to choose a different option.

If you’re looking to disable Avast completely, or you just want to turn it off temporarily, in this post, we’ve provided step-by-step instructions on how to do both.

Turn Off/Disable Avast Completely or Temporarily

If you need to turn off avast completely for a specific amount of time, whether to run a specific program that gets blocked by Avast, or you want to install an application and Avast is blocking the install, you have a few choices. You can either temporarily disable Avast completely, you can whitelist those programs or applications in Avast (so they don’t get blocked), or you can turn off specific features of Avast that are causing the program/application you are trying to run to be blocked.

In this section, we’ll discuss how to turn off avast completely for a certain period of time, or indefinitely.

1. In you taskbar, on the right-hand side, locate the orange Avast icon (you might have to click the up-arrow to ‘Show hidden icons’
2. Right-click on the orange Avast icon one you have located it
3. Hover over ‘Avast shields control’ on the menu that pops up
4. From the expanded menu that comes up, you can choose to disable Avast for a set amount of time or indefinitely (‘Disable permanently’)
5. Left-click on the option you want and Avast will be disabled

When you’re ready to turn Avast back on, you can right-click on the Avast icon again, hover over ‘Avast shields control’ and choose to enable all Avast shields.

How to Whitelist Blocked Programs in Avast

If you don’t want to go completely unprotected and you just want Avast to let a specific program run without getting blocked, you could always just whitelist that program. To do so, follow these instructions:

1. Open up the Avast dashboard
2. In the top-right hand corner of the dashboard, click ‘Menu’ and then ‘Settings’
3. Under the ‘General’ tab click on ‘Exceptions’ to bring up the necessary options
4. Then, click on ‘Add Exception’ and type in the URL or browse for the program you want to whitelist
5. Either hit ‘Add Exception’ if you’re typing in a website, or hit ‘Browse’ to locate the program you want to add an exception for

Disable Specific Features of Avast

If you don’t want to disable Avast completely, but you just want to stop running a specific Avast feature, you can also do so in the Avast dashboard. Here are the instructions on how to do so:

1. Open up the Avast dashboard
2. On the left-hand menu, select ‘Protection’
3. Choose ‘Core Shields’
4. In that menu, you can choose which of Avast’s four shields you want to disable
5. Turn off one or more of the shields you want to disable

Uninstall Avast Antivirus

If you have a different antivirus program you want to use or you just don’t want Avast on your computer at all, your best option would be to uninstall it completely. You have a couple of options if you want to uninstall Avast. They are: uninstall Avast manually, or uninstall Avast using the Avast Uninstall Utility.

Uninstall Avast Manually

1. Make sure Avast is closed
2. In the Windows search bar in the taskbar, type in ‘Add or remove programs’ and hit enter
3. A list of your programs and applications will pop up. Locate Avast by either scrolling down until you find it, or by using the search feature
4. Once you’ve found Avast, click on it to select it, and then hit the ‘Uninstall’ button
5. Follow through the prompts to unisntall Avast

Uninstall Avast with the Avast Uninstall Utility

1. Download the Avast Uninstall Utility here.
2. Restart Windows in Safe Mode
3. Open the Avast Uninstall Utility
4. Choose the options that match your Avast install
5. Hit ‘Uninstall’
6. Restart your computer

Should You Uninstall/Disable Avast?

While it’s never a good idea to go completely without an antivirus or firewall program protecting your computer, there are certain scenarios when disabling or uninstalling your antivirus (like Avast) makes sense.

Again, as mentioned above, if Avast is blocking a program or the installation of a program that you know is safe, it makes sense to disable Avast.

And, although Avast is often considered to be one of the better free antivirus programs, if you are switching to a different antivirus program, you’ll definitely want to completely uninstall Avast as having multiple antivirus programs on the same computer can cause problems.

So, should you uninstall or turn off Avast? It really just depends on what you’re trying to do. If you do determine that you need to disable or uninstall Avast, we’ve outlined a bunch of different ways you can do so above.