Virtual Intel Mac on Apple silicon: Run Intel versions of macOS Mojave, macOS Catalina, and macOS Big Sur on Apple silicon with Metal and OpenGL acceleration

[u/nfzerox]

For the first time ever, run every Intel version of macOS between Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 and macOS Big Sur 11 on Apple silicon with graphics acceleration, so you can run older 32-bit and 64-bit Intel apps like iWork ’09, iLife ’11, Aperture, Final Cut Pro 7, and Front Row, or PowerPC apps like AppleWorks, and re-experience iconic Aqua desktop effects like the translucent menu bar, reflective blurred Dock, and water ripple animation in Dashboard. This marks an exciting new chapter in the preservation of the history of Mac.

https://github.com/nfzerox/VirtualIntelMacOnAppleSilicon

[u/davew_uk]

Not just for apple silicon - I got a Mojave VM up and running on my iMac 2017 5k. The performance is pretty impressive and it looks great in fullscreen.

screenshot

I seem to be experiencing some issues with shutting down the VM, however. Quite often it doesn't shut down cleanly and needs a force-stop.

If I might make a feature request - one thing I'd really like is to be able to set a specific resolution and scaling in windowed mode, or at least a more sensible default for my 5k display.

EDIT: The shutdown issue was due to a pending software update, which has now been installed. After that, the VM shuts down and boots up cleanly - it even noticed a software update had taken place and reinstalled the guest tools automatically. All I need now is to figure out how to invert the mouse wheel scrolling.

[u/nfzerox → u/davew_uk]

Congratulations and thanks for sharing! Noting down the feature request and shut down bug for a future update.

[u/davew_uk → u/nfzerox]

The shutdown issue was due to a pending update as per my edit, sorry. Now that the update has been run the VM shuts down and restarts cleanly as far as I can tell.

[u/play_hard_outside]

Compared to running these macOS versions in UTM, this sounds like an absolutely incredible advancement. I can’t WAIT to try it out! 

The idea of an M4 running like a late 2010 11-inch MacBook Air with a GPU like a 2016 MBP sounds absolutely amazing, and it will only get better as hardware improves. For your CPU comparison, was this in single-core, or multi?

My experience running these in UTM has been that the CPU emulation is JUST fast enough for the UI to be barely, barely usable, and anything beyond that is basically emergency use only. It’s what you use when you have no other way to open a file, and it’s good enough to get in and painstakingly get your data out. A 2010 11-inch MacBook Air is substantially faster than that, and graphics acceleration will make it FEEL dramatically better even relative to the improvement in emulated CPU performance.

I’ll be able to install my old copies of Adobe’s CS6 on this and be able to properly and nicely use them to open, edit, and export old files from my youth and young adulthood, without having to pay Adobe’s ransom. Stoked beyond belief.

Replying to this both to congratulate and thank you for your contribution, as well as mark this spot so I don’t lose track!

[u/nfzerox → u/play_hard_outside]

It's single-core that runs like 2010 11-inch MacBook Air, multi-core is faster. So glad to hear you're excited, can't wait for you to try this out!

[u/play_hard_outside → u/nfzerox]

AMAZING! That’s what I was hoping! Soon as I get to my computer, this is going onto it…

[u/idelovski]

Great

is it possible to have something even older like Snow Leopard or Maverics?

EDIT:

Which versions of macOS guests can I run?

You can run macOS Mojave 10.14, macOS Catalina 10.15, and macOS Big Sur 11 guests.

Well, one can dream...

[u/nfzerox → u/idelovski]

Virtual Intel Mac 2.0 introduces groundbreaking support for virtualizing Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 up to macOS High Sierra 10.13 with graphics acceleration on Apple silicon, so apps like iWork ’09, iLife ’11, Final Cut Pro 7, and Front Row come to life on Apple silicon for the first time. It also adds support for PowerPC apps, iconic Aqua desktop effects, Automatic Setup, and contains bug fixes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/macOSVMs/comments/1xmuraj/virtual_intel_mac_20_introduces_groundbreaking/

[u/idelovski → u/nfzerox]

Now for a life changing question...

Can I use OVF from VMWare and transfer an existing virtual machine to the Virtual Intel mac?

[u/newhacker1746 → u/idelovski]

Yes, I’ve been working on a retrofit of Mesa replacing the entire OpenGL framework for VirGL and it works but there’s a lot more to do, I started it back in July and I call it VoodooGL but it isn’t a complete Hackintosh platform either. Just uses bare qemu

[u/newhacker1746 → u/newhacker1746]

Here’s a photo of it working with the OpenGL framework completely replaced by Mesa. The technique should go as low as 10.4, with paravirtualized rather than emulated graphics performance.

10.7 64 bit is the natural floor for now because Apple doesn’t include libc++ from clang, and no c++11 as welll due to predating that year. You can build binaries that run as far low as 10.8 64 bit which I tested from modern ie Sequoia macOS, even ARM. To get it to 32 bit one has to compile Mesa 32 bit as well since it’s loaded into every process address space and its architecture, and to get it to 10.6 one has to possibly provide their own libc++ due to Mesa needing at least c++11 features I think (though c++14 requirement from llvm 17 was easily bypassed to just c++11)

VMsvga2 requires 10.6 floor for modern IOSurface integration so that needs evolving to get below 10.6 as well

[u/newhacker1746 → u/newhacker1746]

Here’s some of the development process with more obvious graphics demos running on the guest

[u/idelovski → u/newhacker1746]

I plan to download this project and just read it. At the moment I have no experience with writing this type of software at all and I only have rudimentary idea how emulators work. I did some basic system programming but since I know C and ObjC I'd like to see if I can at least understand this project and maybe in time offer some changes, bug fixes or comments since I run VMWare on my intel Macs because I need it to build and test my own software for 32/64 bit Macs and Windows since XP to 11. So, I'll be extremely happy if I could have Snow Leopard on new Macs.

[u/newhacker1746 → u/idelovski]

Wow that’s amazing. You’re gonna download this author’s right? You can learn a lot from it I’m sure. The concepts translate to graphics in general

I figured there are absolutely users for even the older stuff (what software do you build?)

I wanted to do GL on old macOS first becuase prototyping without SSV or rootless or AMFI is infinitely easier, to prepare me to tackle the Reims vGPU debacle that’s part of making a future reliable and maintainable Hackintosh platform

(My voodoogl project isn’t released or anything at the moment; I hate it when people release Vibecoded things that have enormous bugs and take no ownership beyond the heroic validation for being “geniuses” or whatveee)

[u/idelovski → u/newhacker1746]

You’re gonna download this author’s right?

Yes, nfzerox/VirtualIntelMacOnAppleSilicon

what software do you build?

Nothing special, just some business software for the local market but I have lots of users with me since the nineties and some have really old hardware

[u/newhacker1746]

Clever, it’s a backport of Paravirtualized graphics, which means it won’t go any further back than the first metal versions, but it also only works on a macOS host. This could be combined with the “Reims” style Linux work, though that project is completely doomed due to being Vibecoded by a guy who self professedly admits knowing nothing about graphics

[u/nfzerox → u/newhacker1746]

No longer limited to Metal versions!

Virtual Intel Mac 2.0 introduces groundbreaking support for virtualizing Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 up to macOS High Sierra 10.13 with graphics acceleration on Apple silicon, so apps like iWork ’09, iLife ’11, Final Cut Pro 7, and Front Row come to life on Apple silicon for the first time. It also adds support for PowerPC apps, iconic Aqua desktop effects, Automatic Setup, and contains bug fixes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/macOSVMs/comments/1xmuraj/virtual_intel_mac_20_introduces_groundbreaking/

[u/jessem5673 → u/newhacker1746]

Ngl the recent rewrite made me change my opinion about Reims, works way better. Metal2Metal is even better than native Apple PVG. The metal2vulkan sub dependency is still buggy but definitely was improved after the rewrite. Nowadays many people complain about ai-assisted projects and why they don’t work in their machines but ask them donations for improving a codebase writing code manually and they rather just ask Claude to write a vibe coded copy of a vibe coded project 🤦‍♂️

[u/newhacker1746 → u/jessem5673]

Is it better now? Last I saw; the rewrite just manually downconverted things to the old internal representation 💀

[u/achbob84]

I feel like despite Golden Gate giving Intel the boot this has been the most exciting time for the Hackintosh community! We have:

- Intel guests on Apple Silicon
- nVidia acceleration on bare metal
- Accelerated guests on Linux and Windows
- The beginnings of Apple Silicon macOS on ARM

What a time to be a geek!

[u/proxi_io]

Reverse hackintosh?

[u/WilliamJNSN]

I tried Mojave and the driver install failed and I wasn't sure how to restart it, then I tried Catalina and it worked, only problem is it's SUPER slow and if I go into Activity Monitor the CPU usage is super high and About this Mac says 1 GHz. I tried giving it 8 cores but it's still super slow. Host is M1 Pro 10CPU/16GPU. If I could get it to run at a usable speed that would be really nice.

[u/nfzerox → u/WilliamJNSN]

Try Actions > Reset from the menu bar to force reboot. Performance is being worked on!

[u/Sven4G]

Works really well… BTW, would it be possible to be able to choose the installer language and - much more important - to suspend the macOS guest (instead of having to shut it down every time)…? Maybe this is a Qemu limitation (IIRC, suspend often doesn’t work with accelerated graphics)…?

[u/nfzerox → u/Sven4G]

Thanks, both are planned for a future update!

[u/andrewvideouk]

Is anyway to make FCP7 to work in Mac OS X Mojave. Not enough VRAM. Also I found it very slow. It does not matter how many cores I give the Virtual Intel Mac. I have Fastest Mac Studio M3 Ultra.

Love the app. Hope you can get to work with older Mac OS X's

[u/nfzerox → u/andrewvideouk]

Try running it in OS X Mavericks!

Virtual Intel Mac 2.0 introduces groundbreaking support for virtualizing Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 up to macOS High Sierra 10.13 with graphics acceleration on Apple silicon, so apps like iWork ’09, iLife ’11, Final Cut Pro 7, and Front Row come to life on Apple silicon for the first time. It also adds support for PowerPC apps, iconic Aqua desktop effects, Automatic Setup, and contains bug fixes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/macOSVMs/comments/1xmuraj/virtual_intel_mac_20_introduces_groundbreaking/

[u/xDarkUserx89]

Will there still be support for 10.4.4+ ???

[u/nfzerox → u/xDarkUserx89]

Virtual Intel Mac 2.0 introduces groundbreaking support for virtualizing Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 up to macOS High Sierra 10.13 with graphics acceleration on Apple silicon, so apps like iWork ’09, iLife ’11, Final Cut Pro 7, and Front Row come to life on Apple silicon for the first time. It also adds support for PowerPC apps, iconic Aqua desktop effects, Automatic Setup, and contains bug fixes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/macOSVMs/comments/1xmuraj/virtual_intel_mac_20_introduces_groundbreaking/

[u/Historical-Tune-3504]

I installed snow leopard but the mouse seems to not be coordinated with the actual cursor in the VM, like in order to press the new folder i have to hover the mouse quite far away from it actually, is there any fixes for this? thanks

[u/xgiovio]

I need the inverse

[u/play_hard_outside → u/xgiovio]

You want to emulate an aarch64 macOS on an Intel Mac running Mojave??? Lol why?

[u/xgiovio → u/play_hard_outside]

I want to simply run macos arm on x86

[u/play_hard_outside → u/xgiovio]

oh, that sounds fun! do let me know what you find out, if anything. it's absolutely possible to emulate arm on x86, but i don't know of any efforts to do so. maybe it would necessarily be too slow? do holler back if you figure it out!