Virtualization framework is a high-level API to create macOS and Linux virtual machines. Hypervisor is a low-level API to build virtualization solutions without the need for a kernel extension. If you’re interested in containers on the Mac, check out the Containerization package and its associated container tool. Virtualization: Forums subtopic: App & System Services > Core OS Forums tag: Virtualization Virtualization framework documentation Using iCloud with macOS virtual machines documentation article Use iCloud on a virtual machine support article Running macOS in a virtual machine on Apple silicon sample code Running Linux in a Virtual Machine sample code Running GUI Linux in a virtual machine on a Mac sample code Building macOS apps with Xcode 26 on macOS 26 VM forums thread — This thread describes how the development experience in VMs has improved recently, and one remaining issue that you might bump in to. Hypervisor: Forums subtopic: App & System Services > Core OS Forums tag: Hypervisor Hypervisor framework documentation Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Is it possible to expose a custom VirtIO device to a Linux guest running inside a VM — likely using QEMU backed by Hypervisor.framework. The guest would see this device as something like /dev/npu0, and it would use a kernel driver + userspace library to submit inference requests. On the macOS host, these requests would be executed using CoreML, MPSGraph, or BNNS. The results would be passed back to the guest via IPC. Does the macOS allow this kind of "fake" NPU / GPU

I'm pleased to share some significant updates that have recently been released for our Hypervisor and Virtualization frameworks. We've focused on enhancing efficiency, expanding capabilities, and addressing common developer needs. I believe these will be valuable for many of you. Here’s a look at what’s new: Hypervisor Updates We've introduced support for configuring the intermediate physical address (IPA) memory granularity of a VM. This allows for more granular memory mappings, enabling granularity sizes down to 4KB. This is particularly useful for certain specialized device drivers requiring finer memory control. Virtualization Framework Updates More Efficient VM Image Storage with ASIF: We've integrated support for the Apple Sparse Image Format (ASIF). This results in a smaller disk footprint and optimized transfer for VM disk images when using VZDiskImageStorageDeviceAttachment, improving storage efficiency. Custom Network Topologies with vmnet: We've added support for vmnet custom network topologies. This enables more flexible VM-to-VM communication based on logical networks with customized configurations, useful for complex testing or development environments. See VZVmnetNetworkDeviceAttachment to get started. Simplified VM Queue Discovery: It's now easier to discover a VM’s on-process thanks to a new property on VZVirtualMachine. This should aid in development and debugging when interacting directly with the VM's queue. These are some of the key highlights of the first beta, and I'm looking forward to seeing how these improvements will be utilized. I encourage you to explore the documentation for full details on these features.

Hi, Since recently there is interest in having faster x87 translation speeds than Rosetta offers.. mainly some old PC games getting stuck at less than 5fps using Wine that uses Rosetta..( some world of warcraft game for ex.).. so main case right now, is games using old fmodex library versions (dll or statically)that uses heavy x87 instructions for audio processing , and such games not being threaded ,stalls the render threead, which is the same thread.. Luckily there is a hack, see: https://github.com/Lifeisawful/rosettax87 ”This is an experimental project that modifies Apple's Rosetta technology to use less precise but significantly faster x87 instruction handlers. The benchmarks show approximately 4-5x performance improvement for x87 floating-point operations.” but limitations are: 1)it runs only on specific Mac version (15.4.1) due to searching some fixed offsets in current rosetta library that may change with mac updates.. 2)requires to run two binaries (a server and the launcher program).. 3)currently doesn’t seem to accelerating x87 instruction on Linux programs/binaries i.e. lacking support for Rosetta on Linux if Apple supports similar technology, it could providing some enviroment variable like ROSETTA_FAST_X87 for enabling/disabling this fast emulation similar to how Rosetta AVX support not enabled by default.. thanks..

I have developed an app to create and run virual machines using mac os virtualization framework for apple siicon and intel macs. I have tried ubuntu, fedora, debian & linux mint distros and they all worked fine with intel macs. But when i try to run other distros like mx linux, manjaro, pop os, endevour os etc on intel mac they all on booting iso just shows the black screen. is there any list of officilay support linux distros for intel macs and apple silicon. the support of linux distros are fairly limited or am i missing something.

I'm testing the newly introduced nested virt API from Hypervisor.framework on an M3 Pro running 15.3.1. First, I'm calling "hv_vm_config_get_el2_supported" to confirm the system supports nested virt, then "hv_vm_config_set_el2_enabled" to enable EL2 in the configuration and finally "hv_vm_config_get_el2_enabled" to confirm it's enabled. After creating the VM with this configuration, I've confirmed with assembly code (checking CurrentEL) that the vCPU is still starting in EL1. Something has definitely changed in the vCPU management, because SMCCC calls that worked fine without calling "hv_vm_config_set_el2_enabled" now trigger an "EC_INSNABORT", but from the guest perspective the vCPU is definitely still in EL1. Is there an additional requirement in addition to calling to "hv_vm_config_set_el2_enabled" to make the vCPU start in EL2?

I can see that a MacOS VM guest running on top of an Apple Silicon MacOS host has GPU acceleration - indicating GPU sharing capabilities for the hardware. Is there also a way to have GPU acceleration in Linux guests (with Vulkan/Mesa drivers)?

Hi, been exploring macOS VM on both Parallels and UTM and they lack some "GPU/graphics" things vs native MacOS which could be useful on some situations (testing some non trusted graphics apps on a Mac VM) so providing similar usefulness as Windows Sandbox.. Current limitations: 1)In MacOS VM night mode doesn't work.. 2)HDR support isn't exposed even when enabling HDR on host 3)missing GPTK support for the Paravirtual GPU (Paravitual GPU supports Metal but isn't enough for GPTK to work which complains about unsupported GPU).. 4)OpenCL is supported but only the CPU device.. so expose GPU device in addition to current CPU only device.. 5)OpenGL only supports the software renderer.. I assume OpenGL driver on Apple M1-4 GPUs being Metal based, and being Metal supported no reason for software renderer only thanks..

I am using Mac Mini M2 with Sequoia 15.1 OS with Virtual Machine (Virtualization.Framework) with same OS. (almost same as here: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/767673) When adding my account in Xcode there is error with: Decoding Error. There was a failure decoding response: (HTTP 401, 60 bytes) The data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format. Please fix that I can't see information like teams and so on

I'm curious if there is a way to add a programmatically controlled keyboard and pointing device to a virtual machine created using Virtualization.framework (for the purposes of sandboxed automation). All of the types I've found in that framework have very little in the way of configurability and seem to be uniquely intended for use with a VZVirtualMachineView. On the other hand, Hypervisor.framework seems extremely low-level so I'm wondering if there is something in between the two I can use to achieve this.

Hi, REQUEST 1: seems Microsoft is ahead of Apple in X86 ARM emulation support at least in features supported.. see: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/06/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-27744-canary-channel/ x64 emulated applications through Prism will now have support for additional extensions to the x86 instruction set architecture. These extensions include AVX and AVX2, as well as BMI, FMA, F16C BMI1/2 and F16C aren't yet supported by Rosetta.. would be useful for games like Alan Wake 2.. so asking for Rosetta equaling features to Prism emulator.. REQUEST 2: there is no way to currently enable AVX1/2 on Rosetta Linux.. on macOS using export ROSETTA_ADVERTISE_AVX=1 does the trick.. but not on Linux VM's.. tested setting this via: /bin/launchctl setenv ROSETTA_ADVERTISE_AVX 1 on Mac before VM launch and inside Linux VM but AVX2 isn't exposed..

Dear Support Team, I constantly get a 401 unauthorised error, when I try to add my Developer account in Xcode while running a virutalised macOS using https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization. So I can't use signing, entitlements, etc when building within a virutalised macOS. The error shown is below: There was a failure decoding response: (HTTP 401, 60 bytes) The data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format. I've found probably the same issue here https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/759877 Unfortunately, I can't find any updates. Are you aware of this problem? Are there any planned fixes in upcoming macOS updates? 15.0 (24A335) Version 16.1 (16B40) Apple M1 Pro, 16 GB Ram Best regards, Evgenii

Hi, please see detailed findings on: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/6799 basically apps that runned via Rosetta Linux now fail in kernels>=6.11 like the included in Ubuntu 24.10 with: /media/rosetta/rosetta hello assertion failed [hash_table != nullptr]: Failed to find vdso DT_HASH (Vdso.cpp:78 get_vdso_dynamic_data) Trace/breakpoint trap the issue seems to be due to this commit. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/48f6430505c0b0498ee9020ce3cf9558b1caaaeb

Hello! I am wondering about the status of Nested Hyper-V Support for VM's? This is specifically regarding this issue with Parallels Desktop, which claims the issue is on Apple's side: Parallels Article: https://kb.parallels.com/en/116239 Within the Article, the no longer accessible previous Apple discussion post for this issue (at least I cannot access it): https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255546412 Is this something that will be fixed and supported soon? Thank you! (If this should be posted somewhere else please just let me know where!)

Hi, It seems that on M4 devices any virtual machine with macOS version older than 13.4 fail to boot, they stuck with a black screen. This is regardless of the virtualization software used (UTM, VirtualBuddy, Viable, etc...). After talking to many people everyone experiences the same. At least for me, this is a massive limitation of the platform, I really hope this is a bug which can be fixed. Thanks, Csaba

https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/feedback/15645457 Metal passthrough on intel VMs causes com.apple.screensharing.menuextra to crash and screensharing to exit Create a 15.1 VM with metal passthrough on 15.0.1 or 15.1 host, enable Screen Sharing, then try connecting to with VNC after restarting the machine. I'm using Anka to create the VM. You'll see VNC work (open vnc://192.168.64.3:5900), then a few seconds in show "Reconnecting...", then work, then go to "Reconnecting..." for ~5m until it eventually works consistently. You'll see launchd showing exits/failures (see screenshots) You'll see diagnostic reports showing things like: Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.RenderBox.Encoder 0 libsystem_kernel.dylib 0x7ff801da5b52 __pthread_kill + 10 1 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x7ff801ddff85 pthread_kill + 262 2 libsystem_c.dylib 0x7ff801d00b19 abort + 126 3 libsystem_c.dylib 0x7ff801cffddc __assert_rtn + 314 4 Metal 0x7ff80d045d72 MTLReportFailure.cold.1 + 41 5 Metal 0x7ff80d01fa2a MTLReportFailure + 513 6 Metal 0x7ff80cfb74e0 +[MTLLoader sliceIDForDevice:legacyDriverVersion:airntDriverVersion:] + 200 7 Metal 0x7ff80cf265c9 +[_MTLBinaryArchive(MTLBinaryArchiveInternal) deserializeBinaryArchiveHeader:fileData:device:] + 89 8 Metal 0x7ff80cf10f0c -[_MTLBinaryArchive loadFromURL:error:] + 537 9 Metal 0x7ff80cf10288 -[_MTLBinaryArchive initWithOptions:device:url:error:] + 844 10 RenderBox 0x7ff9041a15fd RB::(anonymous namespace)::load_library_archive(NSBundle*,

I have a MacMini M2 machine running Sequoia 15.1 OS. On this machine, I am running a Virtual Machine, utilizing the Virtualization.Framework, with the same OS version, 15.1. Logging into my account in the System Settings is successful. Next, I need to add my account in Xcode 16.1. While the initial login is successful, Xcode immediately displays the following error: Decoding Error. There was a failure decoding response: (HTTP 401, 60 bytes) The data couldn’t be read because it isn’t in the correct format. As a result, I cannot see any account information, teams, etc. A very similar bug has been reported at this issue - https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/759877, but there has been no progress or updates there. Is there any chance to fix this and get it working?

Hi! I would like try to boot the Linux kernel with the Hypervisor framework and see how far I get. So far the kernel runs up to the point where it's trying to identify the redistributor of the Hypervisor's GICv3, but I get an exception when it's reading the memory-mapped GICR_FIDR2 register. I tried the same via hv_gic_get_redistributor_reg() and get HV_DENIED. What could be the reason for this exception? I believe I've initialized enough of the GIC for it to work. No interrupts yet, though. It is of course entirely possible I forgot to set/clear some bits, but there are several redistributor registers missing in the framework, so it's not possible to do the full initialization a hardware GIC v3 implementation needs. I assume the Hypervisor's GIC abstraction takes care of several steps internally. What are the steps to initialize the HVF's GIC? Do you have a working example? I couldn't find anything on the internet. The popular virtualization software out there all seem to bring their own emulated interrupt controller. I'm using Sequoia 15.0.1. Thank you for any hints!

Hi, I'm building a Virtual Machine Manager on top of Hypervisor Framework and having a problem with hv_vcpu_run never return somehow. I tested the same code on Asahi Linux using KVM and everything are working correctly. I really have no idea what I'm doing wrong here. How I setup a vCPU: https://github.com/obhq/obliteration/blob/main/gui/src/vmm/aarch64.rs How I use the Hypervisor Framework: https://github.com/obhq/obliteration/blob/main/gui/src/vmm/hv/macos/cpu.rs#L402 Thanks in advance.

How does VMWare access USB devices without have any specifics of the USB device? Does it use the same profile/entitlement process or does it take a different approach?