Tart by Cirrus Labs
Hacker ApprovedRanked 7 of 19 virtual machine tools by recommenders
Runs macOS and Linux virtual machines on a Mac, well suited to disposable CI and sandboxed dev environments. Critics note it is source-available, not open source.
Runs macOS and Linux virtual machines on a Mac, well suited to disposable CI and sandboxed dev environments. Critics note it is source-available, not open source.
24 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 20
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 20 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Runs macOS VMs on macOS
“use something that leverages Apple's Virtualized.framework to run any version of macOS you want”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Why macOS27 won't be supporting Intel anymore” “works great for running macOS (and Linux) VMs on macOS if you're technical”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine” “tart lets you run macOS on macOS fairly well”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “System: Control your Mac from anywhere using natural language” Wrapper over Apple's Virtualization framework
“use something that leverages Apple's Virtualized.framework to run any version of macOS you want”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Why macOS27 won't be supporting Intel anymore” “it's "just" a wrapper around Virtualization.framework with a few extra pieces”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI shut down Circus CI on Monday, June 1, 2026” “tart, which is a lightweight wrapper around the official Apple API”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI shut down Circus CI on Monday, June 1, 2026” Praised as the best option
“Tart is really cool, impressive, and useful.”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI shut down Circus CI on Monday, June 1, 2026” “tart is probably the best out there”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “How fast is a macOS VM, and how small could it be?” “for macOS, tart has been great!”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Virtualisation on Apple Silicon Macs is different” Good for ephemeral CI and sandboxes
“self-maintained fully sandboxed environments for CLI very liberating, alleviating my security concerns”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Sandboxing Claude CLI with Tart on Apple Silicon” “There's almost no other way I've found to stand up ephemeral CI/CD macOS VMs”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI shut down Circus CI on Monday, June 1, 2026” “gives you a full dev machine with a single command line”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “Docker Sandboxes – Disposable, isolated sandboxes for AI agents”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Source-available rather than open source
“The when to choose Loom in the Tart section should also mention licensing, it is relevant at the choosing point.”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Lume 0.2 – Build and Run macOS VMs with unattended setup” “Also worth drawing attention to Tart being source available not open source.”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Lume 0.2 – Build and Run macOS VMs with unattended setup”
Other virtual machine tools people recommend
The four most recommended other virtual machine tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QEMU | 114 | 42 | 73% | 12 | 16 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| UTM | 49 | 11 | 82% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| VirtualBox | 34 | 33 | 51% | 12 | 18 yrs3 owners | — |
| Lima | 31 | 3 | 91% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Tart by Cirrus LabsThis page | 20 | 4 | 83% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
27 of the 30 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“self-maintained fully sandboxed environments for CLI very liberating, alleviating my security concerns”
“tart makes each one a named thing: a manifest, a fetch script, a render script.”
“gives you a full dev machine with a single command line”
“Tart VMs have problems with signing into icloud and other things that need a real secureID enclave.”
“Use Tart or VirtualBuddy, both open-source, for a packaged solution”
“tart is also an option I like a lot, but it's macOS only.”
“Not even Tart or Apple Container support it, as far as I know.”
“this does technically meet the very minimal commitment”
“tart is probably the best out there”
“I got torch to run in a Cirruslabs Tart instance.”
“for macOS, tart has been great!”
“use something that leverages Apple's Virtualized.framework to run any version of macOS you want”
“Back when I first heard of tart I thought it was amazing, with the one downside being the license.”
“they've often surfaced issues I needed to address”
“It won’t and I think it will thrive even more.”
“There's almost no other way I've found to stand up ephemeral CI/CD macOS VMs”
“They have OCI compatible Mac VM images that are prebuilt. It's quite good.”
“it's "just" a wrapper around Virtualization.framework with a few extra pieces”
“Tart is really cool, impressive, and useful.”
“tart, which is a lightweight wrapper around the official Apple API”
“It's pretty speedy once it's up and running.”
“works great for running macOS (and Linux) VMs on macOS if you're technical”
“Tart VM or manually doing apple's container CLI is maybe most of the way there, but images are huge.”
“The when to choose Loom in the Tart section should also mention licensing, it is relevant at the choosing point.”
“Also worth drawing attention to Tart being source available not open source.”
“Tart broke networking in Tahoe”
“tart lets you run macOS on macOS fairly well”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.