MacVisor

MacVisor is a native virtualization app for Apple Silicon Macs, built on Apple's Virtualization framework. It runs macOS, Linux, FreeBSD and Windows virtual machines and works like a small hypervisor host: a background service owns the VMs and runs each in its own process, so VMs keep running when the app is closed and can be managed from the app or the mvz command-line tool.

Linux VMs come from a verified catalogue of vendor distribution published cloud images (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux, CentOS Stream, openSUSE Leap and Alpine), set up on first boot with your account, SSH keys and an optional container runtime. macOS VMs install from Apple's restore images, and macOS 27 or later guests skip Setup Assistant. Windows 11 on ARM installs unattended.

Features:

• Disk-only and live snapshots, templates and linked clones
• Named shared-NAT and host-only networks, VLAN bridges, DHCP reservations, port forwarding and a host-enforced firewall
• A guest agent for clipboard, file transfer, shared folders, an SSH shell and a per-VM Docker socket
• Headless VMs, autostart at login, VM high availability (HA) and the mvz CLI for scripting and local CI
• AI sandboxes: coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex run in a disposable VM, API keys stay on the Mac, and you review a diff before changes reach your project
• No analytics or telemetry

MacVisor runs ARM64 guests only and does not emulate x86. It has a free 30-day trial, then a one-time license per Mac, with yearly Business and Enterprise licenses for teams needing support and SLAs.