To exchange files between the VM and the Mac host you should enable file sharing on the host, and connect to that from the guest. This also means that none of the apps supports proper shared folders with the host, because of a limitation in Monterey. That’s essential if you want to downgrade or disable Secure Boot, for example if you want to turn SIP off in your VM. The one notable exception to this is VirtualBuddy, which apparently uses an undocumented method of booting a Monterey guest into Recovery mode. VirtualBuddy is free and open source, and Viable is also free.Īll four of these apps currently use Apple’s Virtualization framework to download, install and run macOS guests, thus have almost identical core features and shortcomings. Parallels Desktop costs upwards of $/€99.99 or £89.99, and UTM is available from the App Store for around $/€/£9.99, or free from its own site. There’s also my free app Viable now in beta 3.Īlthough VMware Fusion is available in a pre-release version and can run Windows 11 for ARM and various Linux distros as guests, it can’t run macOS as a guest. There are currently three major apps to run macOS as a guest on an Apple silicon Mac with Monterey 12.5 as a host: Being able to run up a Monterey VM is highly desirable to safeguard your Mac’s transition. Although early indications are that apps compatible with Monterey are unlikely to have problems with Ventura, if you want to upgrade to macOS 13, having an escape route is essential. Virtualising Monterey is important to many users with the forthcoming release of macOS Ventura. This article is a brief survey of what’s currently available, placing emphasis on the most challenging task, running macOS as a guest operating system. When it comes to doing the same job on Apple silicon Macs, choice is more limited. Running a different version of macOS or another operating system in a virtual machine is fairly straightforward on an Intel Mac, and there’s no shortage of apps to do that.

M1 parallels alternative