No, with virus protection on, F-Secure will run scans automatically in the background. You can also schedule scans to occur daily, weekly, or monthly. The automatic real-time protection is really good, too. It detected all of the test malware files I tried to download and prevented me from accidentally downloading malware on my PC.
However, F-Secure’s scan options are slightly limited, especially compared to competitors like Norton. Norton provides a variety of options, such as a full system scan, quick scan, custom scan, and even a scan tailored to only high-risk files.