How to Run Windows on Mac (via UTM)

This post is valid for Macs with Apple Silicon (M1, M2, etc.) or Intel processors. If you’re unsure which processor you have, follow this support page.

Intro

MacOS is great but sometimes you can’t get around a need for Windows.

• Legacy application
• Windows-only applications
• Developer that needs to test on multiple operating systems
• etc.

For me, I use some vehicle diagnostic software that only runs on Windows (VCDS). I have also needed to access some hardware USB devices via docker, which is not supported on Mac (GitHub issue created in 2016 🤕).

Whatever your reason, here’s how:

TL;DR

1. Download and install UTM
2. Download Windows 11
   • If you have a Mac with Apple Silicon, download an ARM version of Windows 11
   • If you have a Mac with an Intel processor, download an x86-64 version of Windows 11
3. Follow this guide to create and install a new Windows 11 VM in UTM
4. Profit

Options for Running Windows on a Mac

Since we are using a Mac, we will need some software that will let us run Windows or Windows applications. Common options are:

• Dual-booting (Intel Macs only: Boot Camp)
  • Shut down macOS, install Windows onto the hard drive, and fully boot into Windows.
  • Unfortunately there is currently no dual-boot Windows option for Apple Silicon Macs.
• Wine/CrossOver (limited USB support)
  • Allows you to run Windows applications on macOS / Linux. Installs the application only. Translates Windows system calls to your host operating system’s system calls. Does not emulate a whole operating system, so should have better performance. Potentially less reliable, as in, not all applications may work perfectly with it.
• Virtual machine (UTM, Parallels, VMWare Fusion Pro, VirtualBox)
  • While running macOS, run an application that runs a fully-fledged Windows operating system.

If you have an Apple Silicon Mac (like me), that will rule out dual-booting. If you need USB support (like me), that will rule out Wine and CrossOver. This leaves us to using a virtual machine. I think any of them would work just fine. Parallels is paid, the others are free (VMWare is free for personal use). I’m going to document UTM in this post for no reason other than that’s what I’m familiar with (a few years ago, it was the best free option available), and it works great!

The typical consensus is Parallels ($) > VMWare Fusion Pro (used to be $, now free for personal use) > UTM (FOSS) > VirtualBox (FOSS).

Install UTM

See the official UTM installation guide for macOS here

UTM can virtualize Windows, Linux, and even macOS itself in macOS. It can even emulate other processors such as x86-64 (Intel) processors (very slowly), or Power PC. This will allow you to run Windows11x64 or even old OSX operating systems on Apple Silicon.

1. Download UTM here
2. Open UTM.dmg
3. Drag UTM.app to the Applications folder

UTM has now been installed. Double click UTM.app in the Applications folder to open it.

Create a Windows VM in UTM

See the official Windows 11 UTM guide here.

Download Windows

Next, we will need to get an operating system to virtualize. If you have a Mac with Apple Silicon (ARM processors), download an ARM version of Windows 11. If you have a Mac with an Intel processor, download an x86-64 version of Windows 11. If you’re unsure which processor you have, follow this support page.

As Apple started selling Macs with ARM processors in 2020 and stopped selling Macs with Intel processors in 2023, the rest of this article assumes you are running a Mac with Apple Silicon. The process is extremely similar for Macs with an Intel processor, but the instructions won’t match exactly.

1. Click on the “Select Download” drop-down box and select the “Windows 11 (multi-edition ISO for *)”
2. Click “Download Now”
3. Choose your product language
4. Click “Confirm”
5. Click “Download Now” This will download a Win11_*.iso which will be ~5.5GB.

Create Windows VM

1. Open UTM
2. Click on “Create a New Virtual Machine”
3. Virtualize
   • This means you want to run the same architecture OS as your CPU. Ex. if your native CPU architecture is Apple Silicon (which is ARM), you will be using Windows 11 for ARM. If your native CPU architecture is x86-64 (Intel), you will be using Windows 11 x86-64.
   • You can also “emulate” which means to run a different architecture OS than your CPU is designed for (Ex. run x86-64 on Apple Silicon), but expect performance to be much, much slower.
4. Windows
5. Make sure “Install Windows 10 or higher” and “Install drivers and SPICE tools” is checked. Also make sure “Import VHDX Image” is unchecked. Press “Browse” and select the ISO you downloaded previously. Click “Continue”
6. Select the amount of RAM and CPU Cores you’d like to give the VM.
   • These will be fully reserved by the VM whenever it is running, so don’t give it too much resources and thereby starving your host operating system.
   • You can always change the resource allocation later.
   • I’d recommend at least 2048MiB of RAM + 2 CPU cores for ARM, 4096MiB of RAM + 2 CPU cores for x86-64. Press “Next” to continue.
     • Microsoft says Windows 11 requires at least 2 cores, 4GB RAM, and 64GB hard drive… but only some of those values are enforced in the installer.
7. Specify the maximum amount of drive space to allocate. Press “Next” to continue.
   • I’d recommend at least 32GiB. Windows 11 itself takes up ~22GiB.
     • Note that increasing this size in the future can be a little tricky. I’ve found it easier to store things in a shared directory (see #8 below) than increasing the drive space.
8. If you have a directory you’d like to mount (share with) in the VM, select it here.
   • Ex. If you select your Mac’s Downloads folder, you will be able to add/view/modify files in your Mac’s Downloads folder while you are in the Windows VM. It will appear as a “Network Drive” in Windows.
   • You can always change this later.
9. Press “Save” to create the VM.
   • I like to rename my VM to “Windows11arm” or similar.

Install Windows 11

In UTM, select the VM that we just created on the left side, then press the play button to boot up the VM and begin the installation.

• Make sure you press a key when Press any key to boot from CD or DVD... is shown. Otherwise, you will end up at a black screen with Shell> _.
  • If you end up at Shell> _, type exit + press Enter. This will kick you back out to the BIOS. Use the down arrow key to go to “Continue”. Press Enter.
  • You will then see Press any key to boot from CD or DVD.... Press a key, otherwise you will end up back at Shell> _.
• If you get stuck anywhere, feel free to click on the red “x” in the top left to quit the VM and start over.

ℹ️ Follow the Windows 11 installation prompts (click here to show them all) ℹ️

1. Select your language + time and currency format. Click Next
2. Select keyboard or input method. Click Next
3. Enter your product key
   • You can also click I don't have a product key but using Windows without a product key is against the EULA (end user license agreement). See Section 5.
   • I see no real reason to get Windows 11 Pro. Windows 11 Home seems fine.
4. Accept license terms
5. Select Disk 0 Unallocated Space. Click Next
   • If you see multiple disks/partitions here (after a failed install), delete the disks/partitions until there is only one disk of unallocated space.

Windows will install and reboot multiple times from here. Expect the following durations:

• ~60min 2014 MacBook Pro Retina, 4GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores
• ~10min M1 Mac, 2GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores
• ~5min M4 Mac, 2GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores

1. Confirm your country or region. Click Yes
2. Confirm your keyboard layout or input method. Click Yes
3. Select if you’d like to add a second keyboard layout
   • After this, Windows may try and install updates. If you don’t want this to happen, you can always turn of WiFi or disconnect networking in macOS before installing Windows.
4. Enter your name. Click Next
   • Windows 11 x86-64 seems to make you sign into a Microsoft account at this point. To avoid that, you can press Shift + F10 (likely Fn + F10 on a laptop) to bring up the command prompt. From there, if you type start ms-cxh:localonly, that will let you create a local user.
5. Enter a password. Click Next
6. Confirm your password. Click Next
7. Create 3 security questions, clicking Next each time
   • If you don’t want to create security questions, use a blank password in the step above.

Windows will complete the installation from here. Expect the following durations:

• ~20min 2014 MacBook Pro Retina, 4GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores
• ~5min M1 Mac, 2GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores
• ~2min M4 Mac, 2GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores

1. Sign into Windows 11 + wait for more installation steps to complete
2. Once you’re signed in, you should be prompted with the UTM Guest Tools Installer.
3. Click on Next >
4. Click on I Agree
5. Click on Finish

Estimated Installation times (with WiFi off to avoid automatic Windows updates):

• ~90min 2014 MacBook Pro Retina, 4GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores
• ~15-20min M1 Mac, 2GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores
• ~10min M4 Mac, 2GiB RAM, 2 CPU Cores

Using the Windows VM

That’s it! You now have a fully functioning Windows virtual machine running on macOS.

If you’d like to change the resources for this VM, shut down the VM. Then, at the main UTM screen, select the VM from the sidebar on the left, then click the “Edit selected VM” button on the top right. From here you can go to “System” to change the RAM, CPU cores, etc.

If you want to attach a USB device to the VM, plug it into your machine, boot up the VM, then click on the “USB devices” button in the top right. You should then see available USB devices that you can “pass-through” to the VM.

Outro

Hope this was helpful! Please let me know of any issues or suggestions you have in the comments 😊