Open Source Mac Virtual Machine Software
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Virtual Machine Software for Mac
View 19 business solutionsBrowse free open source Virtual Machine software and projects for Mac below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source Virtual Machine software by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
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UTM
Virtual machines for iOS and macOS
UTM is a full-featured system emulator and virtual machine host for iOS and macOS. It is based off of QEMU. In short, it allows you to run Windows, Linux, and more on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad. UTM/QEMU requires dynamic code generation (JIT) for maximum performance. JIT on iOS devices requires either a jailbroken device or one of the various workarounds found for specific versions of iOS. UTM SE ("slow edition") uses a threaded interpreter which performs better than a traditional interpreter but still slower than JIT. This technique is similar to what iSH does for dynamic execution. As a result, UTM SE does not require jailbreaking or any JIT workarounds and can be sideloaded as a regular app. -
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Windows (Dockur)
Windows inside a Docker container
This project makes it surprisingly easy to run a Windows environment inside a Docker container by using a QEMU-based virtual machine under the hood. It provides a turnkey image and a simple set of environment variables so you can select Windows editions, control disk persistence, and access the VM via a web-based VNC console or similar remote viewers. Because the VM is wrapped in Docker, you can treat Windows as a disposable, repeatable service: create, snapshot with volumes, tear down, and rebuild with consistent results. The setup bundles sensible defaults for UEFI/OVMF firmware, virtio devices, and automated first-boot behavior to streamline installation. It’s handy for demos, testing, or hosted tooling that truly requires Windows but where you still want container-style workflows and orchestration. -
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AtomVM
Tiny Erlang VM
Brings Erlang, Elixir and other functional languages to really small systems. AtomVM implements from scratch a minimal Erlang VM that supports a subset of ErlangVM features and that is able to run unmodified BEAM binaries on really small systems like MCUs. There is much more information, including a more complete "Getting Started Guide," extensive documentation, examples, and contact information available on the AtomVM project website. AtomVM aims to be easily portable to new platforms with a minimum effort, so additional platforms might be supported in a near future. AtomVM is still in its early stages, but it can run simple applications similar to those available in examples and tests. This basically means that an instruction has not been implemented yet, or that an outdated version has been used. Please, make sure to always run AtomVM using latest version. -
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Lima
Linux virtual machines, with a focus on running containers
Lima launches Linux virtual machines with automatic file sharing and port forwarding (similar to WSL2). -
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Quickemu
Quickly create and run optimized Windows, macOS and Linux
Quickly create and run optimized Windows, macOS, and Linux virtual machines. Quickemu is a wrapper for the excellent QEMU that automatically "does the right thing" when creating virtual machines. No requirement for exhaustive configuration options. You decide what operating system you want to run and Quickemu takes care of the rest. The original objective of the project was to enable quick testing of Linux distributions where the virtual machines and their configuration can be stored anywhere (such as external USB storage or your home directory) and no elevated permissions are required to run the virtual machines. -
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OpenMausBot
Open Source Alternative to Grok Bot with a virtual machine
OpenMausBot is an open-source, local-first desktop app that presents AI agents as a roster of chat contacts. Each bot can have its own personality, model, conversation memory, computer, and connected apps. Bots can run through locally installed Claude, Codex, or Grok command-line agents while using the user's existing logins and subscriptions. A local harness server owns the agent processes and stores transcripts, keys, and events on the user's machine. Agents can work through cloud Linux desktops, isolated local virtual machines, or supported host-control modes, with risky actions surfaced for user approval. The app also supports connected services, per-bot model switching, separate channels, portable team packages, voice interaction, and live views of agent activity. -
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Packer
Build Automated Machine Images
Packer is an open source, automated machine image creation tool. It is designed to create any type of machine image for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Lightweight yet modern, Packer encourages the use of automated scripts to install and configure the software within your Packer-made images. It is highly performant, able to run on every major operating system and create machine images for several platforms in parallel. Packer supports a great number of platforms out of the box, and support for other platforms can be added through plugins. Any image it creates can also be easily turned into Vagrant boxes. -
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VirtualBuddy
Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon
VirtualBuddy can virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon, with the goal of offering features that are useful to developers who need to test their apps on multiple versions of macOS, especially betas. -
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macOS (Dockur)
macOS inside a Docker container
dockur/macos packages a macOS virtual machine inside a Docker container using QEMU/KVM, making it easy to spin up a macOS environment on a Linux host. It provides sensible defaults for firmware, disk, and devices, plus a browser-accessible VNC console so you can complete installation and interact with the desktop remotely. Typical inputs—like environment variables and mounted volumes—control edition choice, storage persistence, and resource sizing, which makes runs repeatable and disposable. Because it’s containerized, you can script lifecycle operations, snapshot state via volumes, and integrate the VM into CI or demo setups without a traditional hypervisor UI. Performance depends on host capabilities and whether hardware acceleration is available, but for light GUI tasks, tooling, or sandboxing, it’s surprisingly practical. Users should bring their own valid media and licenses, and be mindful of platform terms and host resource limits. -
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Cassowary
Run Windows Applications on Linux as if they are native
Run Windows Applications on Linux as if they are native, Use Linux applications to launch files located in the windows vm without needing to install applications on vm. With easy-to-use configuration GUI. -
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Fengari
The Lua VM written in JS ES6 for Node and the browser
The Lua VM written in JS ES6 for Node and the browser. This repository contains the core Fengari code (which is a port of the Lua C library) which includes parser, virtual machine, and base libraries. However, it is rare to use this repository directly. -
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MoarVM
A runtime built for the 6model object system
Short for "Metamodel On A Runtime", MoarVM is a modern virtual machine built for the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler and the NQP Compiler Toolchain. MoarVM is used by the majority of Perl 6 programmers. Highlights include: Great Unicode support, with strings represented at grapheme level, dynamic analysis of running code to identify hot functions and loops, and perform a range of optimizations, including type specialization and inlining, support for threads, a range of concurrency control constructs, and asynchronous sockets, timers, processes, and more, generational, parallel, garbage collection, support for numerous language features, including first class functions, exceptions, continuations, runtime loading of code, big integers and interfacing with native libraries. MoarVM provides very little directly - and that's a good thing. It is not tied to a particular way of doing inheritance, roles, mixins, method resolution, type-checking, and so forth. -
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Multipass
Multipass orchestrates virtual Ubuntu instances
Multipass is a lightweight VM manager for Linux, Windows and macOS. It's designed for developers who want a fresh Ubuntu environment with a single command. It uses KVM on Linux, Hyper-V on Windows and QEMU on macOS to run the VM with minimal overhead. It can also use VirtualBox on Windows and macOS. Multipass will fetch images for you and keep them up to date. Since it supports metadata for cloud-init, you can simulate a small cloud deployment on your laptop or workstation. -
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macintosh.js
A virtual Apple Macintosh with System 8, running in Electron
This is Mac OS 8, running in an Electron app pretending to be a 1991 Macintosh Quadra. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Bear in mind that this is written entirely in JavaScript, so please adjust your expectations. The virtual machine is emulating a 1991 Macintosh Quadra 900 with a Motorola CPU, which Apple used before switching to the PowerPC architecture (Apple/IBM/Motorola) in the mid 1990s. You'll find various games and demos preinstalled, thanks to an old MacWorld Demo CD from 1997. Namely, Oregon Trail, Duke Nukem 3D, Civilization II, Alley 19 Bowling, Damage Incorporated, and Dungeons & Dragons. There are also various apps and trials preinstalled, including Photoshop 3, Premiere 4, Illustrator 5.5, StuffIt Expander, the Apple Web Page Construction Kit, and more. -
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pyenv-virtualenv
A pyenv plugin to manage virtualenv
pyenv-virtualenv is a pyenv plugin that provides features to manage virtual environments and conda environments for Python on UNIX-like systems. If you installed pyenv into a non-standard directory, make sure that you clone this repo into the 'plugins' directory of wherever you installed into. macOS users can install pyenv-virtualenv with the Homebrew package manager. This will give you access to the pyenv-virtualenv command. If you have pyenv installed, you will also be able to use the pyenv virtualenv command. There is a venv module available for CPython 3.3 and newer. It provides an executable module venv which is the successor of virtualenv and distributed by default. You can use version like miniconda3-3.9.1/envs/myenv to specify conda environment as a version in pyenv. -
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Kata Containers
Build a standard implementation of lightweight Virtual Machines (VMs)
Kata Containers is an open source container runtime, building lightweight virtual machines that seamlessly plug into the container ecosystem. Kata Containers is an open source community working to build a secure container runtime with lightweight virtual machines that feel and perform like containers, but provide stronger workload isolation using hardware virtualization technology as a second layer of defense. Since launching in December 2017, the community successfully merged the best parts of Intel Clear Containers with Hyper.sh RunV and scaled to include support for major architectures including AMD64, ARM, IBM p-series, and IBM z-series in addition to x86_64. Kata Containers also supports multiple hypervisors including QEMU, Cloud-Hypervisor, and Firecracker, and integrates with the containerd project among others. -
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Jasmin is a Java Assembler. It takes ASCII descriptions for Java classes, written in a simple assembler-like syntax. It converts them into binary Java .class class files suitable for loading into a Java Virtual Machine implementation.
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LXD
Powerful system container and virtual machine manager
LXD is a next-generation system container and virtual machine manager. It offers a unified user experience around full Linux systems running inside containers or virtual machines. LXD is image based and provides images for a wide number of Linux distributions. It provides flexibility and scalability for various use cases, with support for different storage backends and network types and the option to install on hardware ranging from an individual laptop or cloud instance to a full server rack. When using LXD, you can manage your instances (containers and VMs) with a simple command line tool, directly through the REST API or by using third-party tools and integrations. LXD implements a single REST API for both local and remote access. The LXD project was founded and is currently led by Canonical Ltd with contributions from a range of other companies and individual contributors. -
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The open-vm-tools project provides a suite of open source virtualization utilities and drivers to improve the functionality and user experience of virtualization. The project currently runs in guest operating systems under VMware virtualization.
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VMsvga2
A display driver for Mac OS 10.5+ running as a VMware guest OS
A display driver for Mac OS 10.5+ running as a VMware guest OS. Update [September 7th, 2014]: As of VMware Fusion 7.0.0, VMware Tools for Mac (darwin.iso) - VMwareGfx.kext has all the features of VMsvga2 and is maintained by VMware. It is recommended to transition to VMwareGfx.kext, as VMsvga2 is no longer under development. Additionally, guestd_patches do not work with darwin.iso from Fusion 7.0.0 - the patch causes vmware-tools-daemon to crash. -
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Bareflank Hypervisor
lightweight hypervisor SDK written in C++
The Bareflank Hypervisor is an open source hypervisor Software Development Toolkit (SDK) for Rust and C++, led by Assured Information Security, Inc. (AIS), that provides the tools needed to rapidly prototype and create your own hypervisor on 64bit versions of Intel and AMD (ARMv8 CPUs, RISC-V and PowerPC also planned). The Bareflank SDK is intended for instructional/research purposes as it only provides enough virtualization support to start/stop a hypervisor. Bareflank can also be used as the foundation to create your own, fully functional hypervisor as it uses the MIT license, and includes 100% unit test coverage and compliance for AUTOSAR. If you are looking for a complete hypervisor (and not an SDK), please see MicroV. If you are looking for a minimal SDK for education or to perform research, this is the project for you. If you are simply looking for a reference hypervisor, please see SimpleVisor. -
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macOS VirtualBox VM Instructions
Instructions and script to help you create a VirtualBox VM
macOS VirtualBox VM is a repository that provides scripts and instructions to build a VirtualBox virtual machine running macOS (ranging across versions like Yosemite, El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave). The script automates preparation of the macOS installer ISO from the App Store application, configuration steps for VirtualBox, and setup guidance to get a working VM. This is valuable for developers who want to test, build, or deploy within macOS without relying on physical Mac hardware or for backward-compatibility testing. The repo documents the steps clearly, handles corner-cases like older OS versions, and provides paths to unlock Guest Additions and optimize VM settings. While specific about VirtualBox and macOS versions, it remains a practical reference for anyone needing a macOS VM this way. It also illustrates how to deal with Apple installer artifacts, command line tooling, and VM setup in a repeatable and scriptable manner. -
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nixos-shell
Spawns lightweight nixos vms in a shell
Spawns lightweight nixos vms in a shell. -
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X11-Basic
A BASIC interpreter and compiler with graphics.
X11-Basic is a dialect of the BASIC programming language with graphics capability that integrates features like shell scripting, cgi-Programming and full graphical visualisation into the easy to learn basic language on modern computers.
