wrmack

Windows 11 on MacBook M1 (ARM)

Steps I went through to install a Windows Insider Preview VHDX on a Macbook Pro using UTM. I needed Windows because I was developing an app to submit to the Microsoft Store. With the following setup I was able to develop an electron-based app and submit it to the Microsoft Store.

1. Download the VHDX from Windows Insider Previews. You need to register for the Insider Program and sign in.
   • under Select edition select the Canary channel and press Confirm
   • select language and confirm
   • press Download
2. Open UTM and press + to create a new virtual machine
   • Virtualize

• Windows

Vogtinator

Guide updated to use the official installation .iso from Microsoft, which finally became available in Dec. 2024! For the VHDX disk image based guide check an earlier version of this gist.

When following this guide on a host not capable of aarch64 virtualization, replace -cpu host -accel kvm with -cpu neoverse-n1 (faster to emulate then -cpu max).

1. Download the installation .iso from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11arm64. Win11_24H2_EnglishInternational_Arm64.iso is known to work.
2. Download the the latest virtio-win.iso from https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/latest-virtio/.
3. Create a disk image for the Windows installation: qemu-img create -f qcow2 win11.qcow2 25G
4. Start the installation with generic (ramfb for display, usb-storage for .isos) as well as virtio (virtio-gpu-pci, virtio-block) devices: `qemu-system-aarch64 -M virt -cpu host -accel kvm -m 4G -smp 4 -device ramfb -device virtio-gpu-pci -bios /usr/share/qemu/qemu-uefi-aarch6