Click any tag below to further narrow down your results
Links
VirtualBuddy runs macOS 12+ and ARM-based Linux virtual machines on Apple Silicon, automatically downloading or using custom IPSW/ISO images. It offers APFS-based snapshots, file and clipboard sharing, recovery mode, and beta device support via Xcode packages. You can customize hardware, save VM states, and build the app from source with Xcode 16.
- VirtualBuddy lets you run macOS 12+ and ARM Linux VMs on Apple Silicon, including beta OS versions, without extra physical hardware.
- Running newer beta hosts (like macOS 26) requires VirtualBuddy 2.2 beta 2+ and device support files pulled from Xcode 27 beta or Apple's developer portal.
- APFS cloning (Command+D in Finder) lets you duplicate VMs almost for free in disk space, making it easy to snapshot and reset a clean environment.
- File sharing/clipboard sync work via the VirtualBuddyGuest app, with virtiofs mounting required manually for shared folders on macOS 13+ hosts.
container is a Swift tool that runs OCI-compatible Linux containers as lightweight VMs on macOS 26 Apple Silicon. It lets you pull, build, push, and run standard container images, and provides scripts for install, upgrade, downgrade, and uninstall. The project uses the Containerization Swift package and is in active development with a stable API only within patch versions.
- Apple's own tool runs standard OCI containers as lightweight Linux VMs directly on Apple silicon Macs, using the virtualization framework instead of Docker-style shared-kernel containers.
- Requires macOS 26 specifically, and it's built on Apple's open-source Containerization Swift package.
- Still 0.x/actively developed, so breaking changes can happen between minor versions—only patch releases are guaranteed stable.
- Comes with full lifecycle tooling (install/upgrade/downgrade/uninstall scripts, CLI for pulling/building/pushing images) rather than being just a proof-of-concept.
Google’s Gemini macOS app runs on Apple Silicon and sits in your menu bar, ready with a global shortcut (Option + Space) for instant AI assistance. It can share your active window for context-aware answers, sync chat history across devices, and offers tools for image and video creation.
- Gemini's new native macOS app only works on Apple Silicon running macOS Sequoia 15.0+, leaving Intel Macs unsupported
- Global shortcuts (Option+Space and Option+Shift+Space) let you summon Gemini for quick chat or full window access from anywhere
- With Accessibility permissions enabled, Gemini can read your active window's content to give context-aware help on code, spreadsheets, or documents
- It integrates Nano Banana for image generation and Veo for video creation, plus syncs chat history and memory across devices via your Google account