insidegui/VirtualBuddy
VirtualBuddy
VirtualBuddy is a graphical user interface and manager for creating and running macOS virtual machines on Apple Silicon. It serves as an interface for the native Apple Virtualization Framework, allowing users to provision and boot guest operating systems on ARM-based hardware.
The tool provides a dedicated environment for managing virtual machine administration and software compatibility testing across different macOS versions. It enables the execution of guests via local files, remote URLs, or image catalogs, and supports booting into recovery mode for system repairs.
The system covers hardware configuration and resource allocation alongside state management for saving and restoring sessions. Host-guest integration is handled through synchronized folders and clipboard sharing, while the underlying execution utilizes hypervisor-based performance and device emulation for networking and storage.
Features
- Apple Silicon Virtualization - Provides a comprehensive graphical interface for managing virtualized operating systems on M-series chips.
- Virtual Machine Managers - Provides a manager for configuring hardware resources, managing machine states, and booting from various image sources.
- Virtualization GUIs - Ships a dedicated graphical interface for creating and managing macOS virtual machines on Apple M-series chips.
- macOS Virtualization - Enables macOS guest operating systems to run on Apple Silicon for testing and beta releases.
- Hardware-Accelerated Hypervisors - Uses hardware-accelerated virtualization to execute guest operating systems with near-native CPU performance.
- Virtual Machines - Provides tools for creating and managing virtual machines, including resource allocation and state management.
- Virtual Machine - Enables capturing and restoring the memory and disk state of running guests to resume previous sessions.
- Virtual Machine Provisioning - Supports the installation and booting of operating systems via local files, remote URLs, and image catalogs.
- OS Version Compatibility Testing - Allows verifying application behavior across different macOS versions by launching guest operating systems.
- Guest Host Filesystem Sharing - Provides mechanisms for sharing directories between the macOS host and the virtualized guest system.
- Virtio Device Emulators - Implements the virtio standard for paravirtualized network and storage communication between host and guest.
- Host-Guest Integration Tools - Facilitates data exchange via synchronized folders and clipboard sharing between the host and guest.
- Virtual Hardware Customization - Provides the ability to adjust virtual hardware specifications and resource allocations for guest machines.
- VM Session State Restoration - Enables users to save and restore the current progress of a running session to resume work instantly.
- Writing Tools - Virtualize macOS 12 and later on Apple Silicon.
