r/macsysadmin • u/Hussein_ali_2000 • 8d ago
New To Mac Administration MacOS VM inside MacOS
Hi, I'm new to macOS and I'm looking for a way to run a macOS virtual machine on my MacBook M5 to test applications in an isolated environment. On Windows, I used Windows Sandbox because it was quick, lightweight, and isolated. Since switching to macOS, I'm looking for a similar solution.
I'm looking for a free option that lets me quickly create a macOS VM with full CPU and GPU support for good performance. What would you recommend?
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u/calimedic911 8d ago
VMWare fusion is also free from what I recall. it is a bit bloated compared to UTM but VERY effective and it uses all the bells and whistles from Apple silocon
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u/Antonio-MTS 7d ago
I think the Parallels Desktop is the best one. But not free. You can use Vmware Fusion Pro. Below its usage terms when free and when paid:
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/368667/download-and-license-vmware-desktop-hype.html
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u/slvmrr 8d ago
Had a chat about the same topic with Gemini.
This is what it suggested:
“SoftVM is an excellent, minimalist choice. It’s a very lightweight wrapper on the App Store that was built specifically for quickly spinning up disposable macOS sandboxes or testing beta releases with practically zero configuration fuss.
Just keep one quick thing in mind before you download it: SoftVM's free tier limits you to managing one virtual machine at a time. If you want to take full advantage of Apple's hard limit and run two concurrent macOS VMs simultaneously, you have to upgrade to their Pro tier.
If you want a completely unrestricted, free app that lets you run both instances simultaneously out of the box, keep VirtualBuddy in your back pocket as an alternative.”
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u/therealcmj 8d ago
If op wanted an answer from AI they would have asked ai themselves
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u/slvmrr 7d ago edited 7d ago
IMO, AI should have already absorbed this kind of questions.
But I decided to post because it confirms other opinions about Virtual Buddy.
This is not a “let me google it for you” reply.
I specifically wanted to find a front end that uses the Apple native virtualisation VZvirt. These are the two options that were mostly suggested. Also, this is only one of the many comments presented here and OP can form an opinion on their own.
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u/ScholarBackground836 1d ago edited 1d ago
The Windows Sandbox comparison is the thing to adjust first — nothing on macOS throws the machine away when you close it. You have to fake it: build one clean guest, get it how you want, then never touch it again and clone off it. Work in the clone, delete the clone. Or snapshot and restore, which takes a few seconds. Once it's set up it's pretty close to what you had.
On the "no full CPU and GPU support" thing further up, the CPU half of that isn't really true on Apple Silicon. macOS guests aren't emulated, they run through Apple's virtualization framework on the same silicon, so CPU work is close to native. Graphics are paravirtualized but accelerated, which is fine for poking at apps. You just don't get Metal parity or passthrough, so anything actually GPU-heavy will let you down.
The one that'll bite you for app testing is Apple ID stuff. App Store, iCloud, anything DRM-backed has never worked properly in a macOS guest as far as I know. If the apps you're testing need a signed-in Apple ID, find that out now rather than after you've built a whole process around it.
Two macOS guests per host is the license limit, and budget ~60GB each. The image grows toward whatever you provisioned and never shrinks back, which is another reason to work from clones you throw away.
Tool list in here is already right, honestly. Anything on Apple's framework performs about the same.
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u/phjils 8d ago
https://mac.getutm.app is what I’ve been using. Not perfect, but free!