However, all that’s required to get the macOS image is a Mac – and the Apple Store. It’s pretty clear that you’re only supposed to install macOS on Apple devices. For macOS, we enter a bit of a grey area… Linux is generally free to use as you see fit. But, but… Is it legal?įor Windows, you’ll need a product key to run even a virtual copy. The links to these files are in the descriptions of the videos. Note that you’ll want to click over to YouTube since you’ll need to download the images/files required. The latest video shows how to install macOS 10.12 Sierra in VirtualBox: You just head on over to YouTube and check out Tech Fire’s channel. How do I install macOS as a virtual puter?

If you need more speedy storage space, check out Samsung’s 850 EVO SSDs !īest of all, it’s all free. Thus, you can run any OS whenever you want, and all you need is a bit of hard drive space. Simple! The whole guest OS and all its programs run inside your host OS. With a virtual machine, you can run an entire operating system (including programs on that OS) in the same way that you’d run Chrome or MS Word. If anything goes wrong, you just delete the virtual machine and start over! No dual-boot, no screwing up of Windows, and it’s fairly fast. You can think of it as running Linux or macOS contained in a window inside Windows itself. Inside Windows, you simply run VirtualBox/VMware, and then start your Linux or macOS. The idea here is that with VirtualBox or VMware, you can run Windows (for example) normally. You then use installation media (like a DVD or image file) for your second OS and “virtually install” the guest OS inside Windows – so to speak. When you run it, it allows you to set aside a chunk of your hard drive as a virtual disk. So, if you run Windows 7, you just download and install the free VirtualBox for Windows program. This is where you run a program like VirtualBox or VMware in your host OS. This is relatively complex to set up for newbies, and if things go wrong you will be crying… You set aside a chunk of hard drive space for each OS, and usually you will use GRUB2 to boot into either Windows, or Linux, or whatever. You have 2 basic options if you want to run more than 1 OS on your puter: If you’re not familiar with virtualization, here’s a crash course. Personally, I switched back to VirtualBox since I seem to have fewer problems with that one, although I was a VMware fan for a short while. So, how do you run a virtual Mac on your Windows or Linux PC?Įasy! You use VirtualBox or VMware. It’s also interesting that despite the very public guides on how to do this, Apple doesn’t seem to care. It still may not be entirely legal to run macOS on your PC, but suddenly it’s very easy to set up. In those days, this was a big no-no.įast-forward to today, and things have changed. In the olden days, the only way to run OS X (now called macOS) on a non-Apple puter was to hack it.

Macos virtual machine