Apple Virtualization Framework
Virtualization framework in Developer tools
Apple's built-in framework for running Linux and macOS virtual machines at near-native speed, officially supporting macOS guests. Critics note limited virtio device support and no USB passthrough.
9 people recommended Apple Virtualization Framework in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026.
Summary written by Claude from 21 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 20 of those comments still count.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- mixed feelings
- 1
- warn against or regret it
- 5
The record
Recommended in 6 of 12 months
In 10 different threads.
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 12 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
- Recommended in 10 threadsNeeds 5 or more, met.
- The biggest thread supplies 11% of its recommendersNeeds half or less, met.
The same rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. Mixed feelings count toward neither side. How the badge works
What people say about it
Reasons grouped from a sample of 20 of the 20 opinions about it, picked in proportion to how many people recommend it, have mixed feelings and criticize it. Each mark is one comment in the sample. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Near-native speed in virtual machines
“macOS virtualization is as fast as native due to hypervisor support, with free but limited driver support thanks to virtio”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Virtualisation on Apple Silicon Macs is different” “Anyone can run any compatible Linux now in a VM, with bare-metal speed but limited to virtio devices.”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report” “You can virtualize macOS in macOS with (nearly) native speed and this is officially supported.”
Comment from 14 Jul 2026 in “Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode” - Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “macOS Container Machines”
Works well out of the box
“seems to do the trick pretty well out of the box”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: I Built a Sandbox for Agents” “Apple Virtualization framework is fantastic”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance” “osx has a fantastic virtualization story”
Comment from 27 Jul 2026 in “How is the Bun Rewrite in Rust going?” Good way to run Linux VMs
“Which is why WSL and Virtualiztion Framework have become the best way to have the Year of Desktop Linux”
Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Separating the Wayland Compositor and Window Manager” “the Year of Linux Desktop is better as a UNIX like headless system running on Apple Virtualization”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Wayland by Default in 2026.1 EAP (Jetbrains)” Base for lightweight containers and sandboxes
“Using Apple virtualization framework (which natively supports lightweight containers) on macOS”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Matchlock: Linux-based sandboxing for AI agents” “shuru was (still) a wrapper over the Virtualization.framework”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Smol machines – subsecond coldstart, portable virtual machines”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Limited device and USB support
“Apple Virtualisation does not offer USB passthrough for connecting to iPhones for iOS development.”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents” “it's not supported by Virtualization Framework's built-in virtiofs "folder sharing". (sad face”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “macOS Container Machines” Lag in UI and file system
“A primary source of UI lag is how Apple's native virtualization framework processes multitouch trackpad events”
Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide” “file system latency on mac os when virtualizing that kills me”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Agent Safehouse – macOS-native sandboxing for local agents” Messy, hard to use API
“Hyper-V and Virtualization Framework wish they were so user friendly”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet” “Virtualization.framework is a remarkable spaghetti in this regard”
Comment from 15 May 2026 in “RTX 5090 and M4 MacBook Air: Can It Game?”
What people said
All 20 opinions about it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it makes sense to use a similarly high level API on macOS”
“osx has a fantastic virtualization story”
“A primary source of UI lag is how Apple's native virtualization framework processes multitouch trackpad events”
“You can virtualize macOS in macOS with (nearly) native speed and this is officially supported.”
“Anyone can run any compatible Linux now in a VM, with bare-metal speed but limited to virtio devices.”
“it's not supported by Virtualization Framework's built-in virtiofs "folder sharing". (sad face”
“QEMU has worse performance than Apple's native virtualization framework on macOS”
“Virtualization.framework is a remarkable spaghetti in this regard”
“macOS virtualization is as fast as native due to hypervisor support, with free but limited driver support thanks to virtio”
“shuru was (still) a wrapper over the Virtualization.framework”
“you can run macOS in a VM (with a separate apple id”
“Which is why WSL and Virtualiztion Framework have become the best way to have the Year of Desktop Linux”
“file system latency on mac os when virtualizing that kills me”
“WSL 2.0, and Virtualisation Framework are really the Year of Linux Desktop. /s”
“Apple Virtualisation does not offer USB passthrough for connecting to iPhones for iOS development.”
“Apple Virtualization framework is fantastic”
“Using Apple virtualization framework (which natively supports lightweight containers) on macOS”
“the Year of Linux Desktop is better as a UNIX like headless system running on Apple Virtualization”
“seems to do the trick pretty well out of the box”
“Hyper-V and Virtualization Framework wish they were so user friendly”
Counts come from 1,791,911 Hacker News comments labeled by Claude, November 2025 to October 2026, with data through October 31, 2026. Counts updated 2 Nov 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.