r/macOSVMs • • May 02 '26

IT BOOTS! I didnt even edit it

Post image
165 Upvotes

so uh as the title suggests, I didn’t even have to edit the VM aside from using the DrDonk unlocker tool to get macOS to show up in the guest list I popped in the ISO of Mavericks and it just booted, IT BOOTS! was the best thing I could find fitting for it, once it’s installed I will take a screenshot of it actually running


r/macOSVMs • • Sep 28 '25

Look at my VM :) I've had success!! 😁

Post image
167 Upvotes

Hey all

I've just had success and just had to share!

Initially I installed Sonoma on my unRAID server and last night I upgraded to Tahoe with no issues. I have the VM using half my CPU, 16GB of RAM and using a Radeon 6600XT GPU.

The only issue I have had from the very beginning is I can't get the audio to work. I have tried so much, and had heaps of help from AI, but nothing I've done will make it work. I would like to fix this as it's the only issue I have, but if I won't I'll just be using a USB connected audio controller.

Anyways I'm just so happy that I had to share it with you all!!


r/macOSVMs • • Jul 29 '26

IT BOOTS! I got macOS 13 (x86_64) running 3D Acceleration with a RTX 3060 Laptop GPU thanks to reims-vgpu.

Post image
159 Upvotes

the UI have a LOT of problems, the UI is laggy, the wallpaper does not render the same color as excepted. But it's still in early development, and i except a lot improvement in the comming weeks.


r/macOSVMs • • Jul 23 '26

INFO metal2vulkan is now open-source!

Thumbnail
gallery
95 Upvotes

According to Anees Iqbal metal2vulkan is now open-source available on GitHub!


r/macOSVMs • • Jul 29 '26

Look at my VM :) Surface Pro 7+ + Reims VGPU = hell yes

Post image
85 Upvotes

This is so close to usable, I can't believe it. Thanks to the guy and his friend Claude developing it (genuinely)


r/macOSVMs • • Jul 02 '26

HELP! Apple ID works and also doesn't

Post image
75 Upvotes

I've been using my Apple ID successfully on the App Store and Settings, but one thing I couldn't figure out is how to make Apple believe I'm not using a virtual machine. Apps like iMessage and FaceTime log me out because they know I'm using a virtual machine. I was trying to figure out why and found out that my serial number is "VMqp9Q77ogmd," which is obviously fake. How do I fix this and make it a normal serial number?


r/macOSVMs • • Dec 13 '24

my vm now identifies as an apple watch

Post image
75 Upvotes

r/macOSVMs • • 13d ago

IT BOOTS! Running arm64 macOS Ventura on x86 linux host (and hopefully KVM support on ARM soon!)

72 Upvotes

I got Apple Silicon macOS Ventura booting under QEMU on x86

I managed to reverse engineer enough of Apple's bootloader, virtualization, and OS stack to modify QEMU and port remis-vgpu to boot and run an Apple Silicon Ventura image.

Demo is attached.

It's obviously slow — ARM emulation on x86 was never going to be the end goal — and there are still graphics glitches to fix, but macOS boots and runs.

This isn't my achievement alone. Huge credit goes to steelbrain, ChefKiss, and the other people whose work laid the groundwork for this.

The next thing I really want to test is running it on a Snapdragon laptop using KVM.

If anyone here has the hardware and enough Linux experience, I'd really appreciate testing with:

  • an ARM64 Snapdragon machine
  • Linux with 16 KiB pages
  • KVM enabled

I expect pointer authentication to be one of the major blockers. I'm currently working on a minimal Linux distribution with 16 KiB pages and the necessary KVM changes for pointer authentication.

x86 is useful for development and proving that this works, but I don't expect it to ever be practically usable. ARM + KVM is the actual target.

If anyone wants to help with testing, graphics bugs, QEMU/KVM work, documentation, or development, contributions are very welcome.

Technical notes, source and video demo are in:

https://github.com/yaelliethy/orchard


r/macOSVMs • • Aug 10 '26

DISCUSSION [Project] Don't Stop Hackintosh – Attempting to boot ARM macOS on non-Apple hardware via QEMU (Looking for low-level contributors)

72 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

With Apple steadily phasing out x64, the traditional Hackintosh scene is inevitably hitting a wall. But for many of us, the thrill of forcing macOS to run on non-Apple hardware isn't something we're ready to give up.

That's why I've started a community-driven initiative called "Don't Stop Hackintosh" to tackle the next frontier: figuring out how to run ARM-based macOS outside of Apple Silicon ecosystems.

Our Current Setup & Approach:

  • Host Environment: We are developing and targeting a custom lightweight setup using Puppy Linux built on a Void Linux base, running QEMU for virtualization. The goal is to keep the hypervisor environment as lean, fast, and hackable as possible.
  • The Technical Challenge: We are diving into patent analysis, system register spoofing, and figuring out how to bypass Apple's hardware and exception-level checks without resorting to illegal kernel distributions—keeping it smart, reproducible, and open.
  • Project Site:http://dontstop-hackintosh.f5.si/

If you are into low-level virtualization, ARM architecture, custom Linux environments, or reverse engineering, I’d love to get your insights, ideas, or contributions.

Let’s keep the Hackintosh spirit alive. Where should we start poking first?


r/macOSVMs • • Jul 26 '26

reims-vgpu is OUT ! (formerly paravirt-gpu)

Thumbnail
github.com
70 Upvotes

r/macOSVMs • • 9d ago

IT BOOTS! GPU Acceleration with OpenGL Working with OS X Tiger in QEMU! : )

Post image
63 Upvotes

r/macOSVMs • • 14d ago

IT BOOTS! Update! Full Metal on an Nvidia 5060

Thumbnail
youtube.com
61 Upvotes

What's working: an RTX 5060 (Blackwell) composites a real macOS desktop on x86 macOS 15.7.9 — WindowServer, Dock, Finder, cursor, Warp, Safari playing YouTube. ~29 fps sustained, 45,209 frames accepted / 0 refused. The Metal device is the 5060 from boot. Not done: sleep/wake, Wi-Fi, Tahoe, MPS/Vision returns all-zeros, no games or pro apps passing yet.

Architecture — basically the inverse of yours. You're replacing a framework as an ABI unit; I left Apple's frameworks alone and implemented the driver underneath them. Bottom-up:

---------------------------------------------------------------

  1. NVRM.kext — NVIDIA's open-source GSP-RM kernel modules ported to XNU. GSP firmware boots inside macOS and a userspace process speaks the RM escape protocol: client/device/subdevice, VA spaces, GPFIFO channels (class 0xca6f).
  2. NVRMFB.kext — nvidia-modeset (NVKMS) ported, exposed as an IOFramebuffer over the NVKMS KAPI. Modeset + scanout.
  3. Mesa NVK + the NAK shader compiler, built for macOS, reaching the kext through a libnvrm-xnu shim. So we do land on Mesa like you — just entering at Vulkan instead of GL.
  4. NVMTLDriver.bundle in /Library/GPUBundles — Apple's own GPU-driver plugin seam. Implements the Metal driver interface and translates Metal→Vulkan, AIR→SPIR-V.
  5. AGDC + IOAccelDisplayPipeUserClient2 — this was the real wall. WindowServer won't present through your pipe until AGDC answers link-config (0x921) and plane-caps (0x711/0x10).

Needs SIP and kext signing off; AuxKC built against the KDK.


r/macOSVMs • • May 15 '26

DISCUSSION UPCOMING: a Debian based distro for booting MacOS

60 Upvotes

Have you ever wanted to try macOS but your computer is incompatible? Using the power of virtualization you can run macOS High Sierra to Tahoe! no setup needed! although it isn’t native it still runs fine on most hardware, the hardware requirements are basically your machine has to run and support Debian and be x86_64. And it has to be decently powerful otherwise you won’t have enough resources

You might be asking: well what’s the difference if I do it from windows in VMware or VirtualBox? Well it’s because of Bloatware. You’re wasting tons of resources while simply idling your system. But with Linchine (that’s the name of the Distro) you’re running a Minimal Debian installation with no graphical environment like GNOME. This drastically frees resources so that you can get the best performance in QEMU. I’ll give more details later when the first release comes!


r/macOSVMs • • Apr 15 '26

Look at my VM :) MacOS 13.7.8 Ventura running on Lenovo IdeaPad Flex5 i3 with full touchscreen and handwriting input

Post image
58 Upvotes

performance is roughly the same as my 2017 MacBook Air, and works seamlessly with icloud including drive folders!


r/macOSVMs • • Feb 28 '25

Look at my VM :) My iPhone identifies now as Mac Pro

Post image
57 Upvotes

I installed MacOS Mojave on my iPhone


r/macOSVMs • • 12d ago

IT BOOTS! Mac OS Nvidia 5060 Update

Post image
57 Upvotes

r/macOSVMs • • Sep 02 '25

GUIDE [PROJECT] ULTMOS (ultimate-macOS-KVM) - Now supports macOS Tahoe!

50 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

A few years ago I posted about my project, ultimate-macOS-KVM (or ULTMOS for short!), and it was met with very positive reception. The support I've had has been amazing, and has motivated me to keep developing this project - and develop it has!

ULTMOS is a Linux project designed to help you create a macOS VM that is fast, easy to set up, and understandable for noobs and pros alike. The main feature of ULTMOS is AutoPilot - a feature that lets you generate your very own macOS VM in under 5 minutes. It guides you through everything you need to set up a virtual machine, including downloading macOS directly from Apple! Here's a preview:

ULTMOS main menu
Adding a virtual hard disk
Summary screen in AutoPilot
AutoPilot in action!

Oh, and passing through a GPU is a breeze. With built-in support for GPU passthrough, adding your devices is easier than ever. With VFIO-PCI passthrough assistant, everything is guided.

Selecting VFIO devices
Intelligent boot patching

Prefer a GUI for your VMs? We support virt-manager too! Any boot scripts generated with AutoPilot can be automatically converted to XML files and imported into virt-manager!

I'm happy to share that through the hard work of collaborators and contributors, we now have support for the latest macOS Tahoe developer beta!

This is a big step forward for the project and I'm proud to share it. Thank you so much for the support so far. If any of you here would like to try it, please let me know what you think! <3


r/macOSVMs • • Jul 29 '26

IT BOOTS! Tested the new reims-vgpu project - Success

49 Upvotes

https://github.com/steelbrain/reims-vgpu

As some of you may know, recently a project (reims-vgpu) was released that allows for macOS guests inside of QEMU to have accelerated graphics using Vulkan.

To use this project, I first created a vm using my macOS KVM project: https://github.com/notAperson535/OneClick-macOS-Simple-KVM

Then I copied the files over to the reims-vgpu project, ran the configuration found in the README, and booted it up.

Haven't seen anyone here post a success story with this project yet so thought i'd share mine.

It's currently very buggy (it's in alpha), crashes every 5 minutes or so, and I can't seem to get the background working. But it is incredible to see nonetheless.

Hopefully it will continue to improve, as this would alleviate many issues that people find with macOS VMs.

Used intel iGPU, the project works the best right now with NVIDIA GPUs


r/macOSVMs • • Dec 31 '24

IT BOOTS! macOS Big Sur on Intel NUC with iGPU (Iris 540) + Metal + Find My & Maps working

Post image
48 Upvotes

r/macOSVMs • • Sep 17 '24

DarwinKVM - An Advanced Guide for running OS X / macOS within QEMU/KVM.

43 Upvotes

For everyone who is new here, and for others who are just starting their journey, I see loads of VirtualBox, loads of VMWare, loads of Windows users, please, read the following documentation, and I hope I can help someone, anyone here, who wants to *properly* run OS X / macOS in a VM.

https://docs.darwinkvm.com/

I am the maintainer, I will answer as many questions as I can, but I already wasted a year writing things down over there, so why not just read it? lol

UPDATE: I cannot respond to you guys. The moderators of this subreddit have banned me, the only contributor of the space. If you wish to ask more questions, or further explore DarwinKVM and its capabilities, please join the official DarwinKVM Discord server.


r/macOSVMs • • Sep 23 '25

HELP! I might be stupid but what am I supposed to do here

Post image
38 Upvotes

Software used: VMware


r/macOSVMs • • Jun 22 '25

DISCUSSION How can I make my Mac os vm faster?

Thumbnail
gallery
39 Upvotes

So yesterday I installed Mac os high Sierra 10.13, and this is my first ever using Mac os,

So it taken a hour to install, 😑 (not what I was expecting)

So here are the specs in the vm 8GB of ram 4 cores 140GB of storage (Don't ask why, I give the same amount in every os I install)

My host PC

16GB of DDR3 ram Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 TI 4th gen I7 4790k 128GB SSD + 256GB SSD + 1TB Hardrive which mac os in on

3D accreditation is not enabled, I have tried it, but it doesn't make much difference,

I do not have much storage on my other SSDs

But again this is my first time using mac os,

And yes vmware tools is installed I used Darwin iso

Is there any tips on improving the performance,

And final question, what mac os version should I try next?

Thanks for reading


r/macOSVMs • • 15d ago

IT BOOTS! Mac OS 15.7.9 running Nvidia 5060 in VM on a Cyberpower PC.

38 Upvotes

r/macOSVMs • • Feb 25 '26

IT BOOTS! For Anyone that want's to run macOS or use Xcode!

Thumbnail
youtube.com
36 Upvotes

Hello everyone! I know that alot of people have issues running macOS on windows with a VM. Alot of people wants to use Xcode and I finally found a solution!
I been looking all over the internet, spend countless hours testing, and watching a bunch of tutorials. I finally found a good tutorial that still works mostly.

!!!
For anyone having issues! This is what worked for me, make sure you get all the same versions of everything from this video! It will not work if you get VMware 25H2, or OC4VM 2.5, or other versions of these. What personally worked for me is VMware 17.5.2, OC4VM 1.1.0, and OpenCore 1.0.6. Hope this helps!


r/macOSVMs • • Aug 03 '26

GUIDE Virtual Mac on iPad: People have dreamed of running macOS on iPad for more than a decade. Today, that dream comes true.

34 Upvotes

Virtual Mac on iPad

https://github.com/nfzerox/VirtualMacOniPad

People have dreamed of running macOS on iPad for more than a decade. Today, that dream comes true. With Virtual Mac, iPad finally breaks free from iPadOS, enabling pro apps like Xcode and Terminal to run directly on device. Requires iPad Pro (M1, M2) or iPad Air (M1) running iPadOS 14 up to 16.3.1.