UTM
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 19 virtual machine tools by recommenders
Free open-source app for running Linux and Windows virtual machines on Apple silicon Macs, with near-native speed. Common caveats: Windows slower than in Parallels, and some guests lack graphics acceleration.
Free open-source app for running Linux and Windows virtual machines on Apple silicon Macs, with near-native speed. Common caveats: Windows slower than in Parallels, and some guests lack graphics acceleration.
60 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 49
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 1 year
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 49 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 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 Linux desktops and VMs well
“i'm using Linux just fine on an ARM desktop for a long time, via Apple Silicon hypervisor enabled via the UTM macos app”
Comment from 27 Nov 2025 in “Same-day upstream Linux support for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5” “i run fedora and arch on my m2 air, via the UTM app which wraps Apple Silicon hypervisor, and it's _fantastic_.”
Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Apple introduces the new MacBook Air with M5” “With Apple Silicon virtualization, having macos and arch and fedora all going at once is amazing.”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Qualcomm Linux 2.0” - Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “MacBook Pro Rival with the Nvidia Powered Surface Laptop Ultra”
- Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “Quickemu: Quickly create and run optimised Windows, macOS and Linux VMs”
- Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “MacBook Pro Rival with the Nvidia Powered Surface Laptop Ultra”
- Comment from 6 Sep 2026 in “Finder is so frustrating and has been since day one”
Near-native speed on Apple silicon
“arm native linux or windows installations in utm/parallels/whatever run damn near native speed”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit” “utm or parallels has linux going at near native speed”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman” “UTM is free and is equivalent to KVM/QEMU in speed”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Unsloth GLM-5.2 – How to Run Locally” Graphics acceleration for Linux guests
“hardware graphics acceleration is supposed to be natively supported out of the box when using UTM's Apple Virtualization Framework backend”
Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide” “OpenGL/virgl works great out of the box for me with UTM and Linux guests”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What's the best virtual Linux desktop experience on macOS for devs?” “fewer than you'd think, especially with Vulkan landing in UTM today”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too” - Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine”
Free and open source
“You can also use UTM to run Windows for free and it is open source.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine” “UTM is free and is equivalent to KVM/QEMU in speed”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “Unsloth GLM-5.2 – How to Run Locally”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Missing graphics acceleration in some setups
“UTM doesn't support graphics acceleration so browser support will be hobbled”
Comment from 18 Jul 2026 in “Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide” “the 2d hardware acceleration for Linux didn't work in UTM.app”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop” Some Windows and FreeBSD guests fail
“It doesn't work well - probably not at all for a modern version of Windows - but the tools exist.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Parallels Confirms MacBook Neo Can Run Windows in a Virtual Machine” “FreeBSD 15 is a complete no-go for X right now on utm, rdp/vnc is the only way.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “OpenBSD-current now runs as guest under Apple Hypervisor” “Tried it earlier using UTM and the Apple hypervisor but didn’t boot.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “OpenBSD-current now runs as guest under Apple Hypervisor”
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 |
| UTMThis page | 49 | 11 | 82% | 12 | 1 yr3 owners | Approved |
| VirtualBox | 34 | 33 | 51% | 12 | 18 yrs3 owners | — |
| Lima | 31 | 3 | 91% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Parallels Desktop | 26 | 13 | 67% | 10 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 80 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the procedure to enable JIT every time you run it was extremely clunky”
“UTM is another great example of this, which is basically a GUI for QEMU.”
“I work from a Linux VM in UTM as my main desktop whole day”
“using the hypervisor for this use case is quite comfortable”
“That's why i switched from Asahi a couple years ago to UTM in apple silicon hypervisor mode.”
“notarization hasn't (yet) been weaponized to censor apps”
“You can see it in the very real, production apps like UTM.”
“hardware graphics acceleration is supposed to be natively supported out of the box when using UTM's Apple Virtualization Framework backend”
“UTM doesn't support graphics acceleration so browser support will be hobbled”
“UTM can be run under a non-admin Mac account. This can allow you to use most Mac-native tooling, at least.”
“UTM is undefeated for me, especially in combination with Vagrant.”
“With Apple Silicon virtualization, having macos and arch and fedora all going at once is amazing.”
“it's excellent, and made me reformat and erase Asahi a couple years ago.”
“UTM is free and is equivalent to KVM/QEMU in speed”
“Install Windows 11 ARM under the macOS "UTM" App. This lets you run x86 Windows programs on Apple silicon.”
“It’s surprisingly good to do with full screen and the Apple hvm is very nice.”
“With UTM wrapping hypervisor.framework, i have a complete fullscreen desktop running Linux”
“my MacBook is compatible with all software ever made via UTM”
“I have never used UTM, but I would imagine it would not have the capability to pass the SD reader through”
“Supposedly yes https://docs.getutm.app/guides/ubuntu/ but have you actually done it?”
“UTM hypervisor already exists in App Store, so Apple is clearly not against the principle of it”
“utm or parallels has linux going at near native speed”
“arm native linux or windows installations in utm/parallels/whatever run damn near native speed”
“UTM has Venus in there with KosmicKrisp – the works, as of January.”
“UTM is nice, but performance running windows is waaay below parallels”
“Unfortunately, the performance is very poor due to Apple restrictions on iOS.”
“It doesn't work well - probably not at all for a modern version of Windows - but the tools exist.”
“You can also use UTM to run Windows for free and it is open source.”
“i run fedora and arch on my m2 air, via the UTM app which wraps Apple Silicon hypervisor, and it's _fantastic_.”
“OpenGL/virgl works great out of the box for me with UTM and Linux guests”
“For that you'd need something like UTM since they're relying on QEMU”
“Tried it earlier using UTM and the Apple hypervisor but didn’t boot.”
“FreeBSD 15 is a complete no-go for X right now on utm, rdp/vnc is the only way.”
“fewer than you'd think, especially with Vulkan landing in UTM today”
“the 2d hardware acceleration for Linux didn't work in UTM.app”
“I have been running an aarch64 Ubuntu VM on my M4 Mini for a while without any problems.”
“it's been great...and Apple silicon is still super efficient”
“i'm doing all my vibium dev in a vm using UTM (and you should, too!)”
“i'm using Linux just fine on an ARM desktop for a long time, via Apple Silicon hypervisor enabled via the UTM macos app”
“Using UTM I managed to get a headless server running on the Mac mini that behaved better than the mini did”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.