How to install a Windows 11 ARM Virtual Machine on an M1 Mac without running Parallels How to install a Windows 11 ARM Virtual Machine on an M1 Mac without running Parallelsįirst, if we want to install Windows 11 on our Mac, we must necessarily get a copy of this software. And it is precisely the latter that we are going to deal with. Obviously, there are also many other alternatives – some still not totally reached as VMware – including some very interesting, free, and based on open-source software. Parallels Desktop for Mac has been rebuilt and optimized to natively run on Apple M1 and Intel-based Mac devices, improving speed and performance. The architecture to allow virtualization must be the same on both the host machine and the guest, so – in our case – Windows ARM will be virtualized on M1 Mac but Windows x86 will only be emulated on M1 Mac.Ĭurrently, the most practical and efficient solution for running Windows on the Mac M1 is to use a paid software called Parallels. – and for this reason, it is faster and more efficient. thus cutting out all the new machines equipped with Apple Silicon chips.Īlso, keep in mind – for performance and problems – that virtualization is different from emulation, where the latter reconstructs the hardware elements via software, while virtualization has direct access to some hardware components – such as the processor, the GPU, the memory.

The problem is that the situation has become complicated since Apple switched to Intel processors and these software pieces are struggling to arrive or perform.Īpple has developed a software, BootCamp, which allows the installation of Windows or other OS on Mac alongside macOS, but the use of these requires a restart, a really uncomfortable situation and which remains confined to Macs equipped with Intel processors. Let’s start with some clarifications: Apple and macOS do not have a proprietary virtualization system open to users – unlike Microsoft which has, for example, Hyper-V – but they open the platform to third-party software. ARM virtualization and x86 emulation on the new Apple Silicon M1 CPU chips

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