To assess how small a macOS VM could be, I ran the same VM of macOS 26.4.1 on progressively smaller CPU core and memory allocations, using my virtualiser Viable. The VM’s display window was set to a standard 1600 x 1000, and I ran Safari through its paces and performed some lightweight everyday tasks, including Storage analysis in Settings.
Starting with 4 virtual cores and 8 GB vRAM, where the VM ran perfectly briskly with around 5 GB of memory used, I stepped down to 3 cores and 6 GB, to discover that memory usage fell to 3.9 GB and everything worked well. With just 2 cores and 4 GB of memory only 3.1 GB of that was used, and the VM continued to handle those lightweight tasks normally.
↫ Howard Oakley
This is good news for people interested in the MacBook Neo who may also want to run a macOS virtual machine on it.
“vRAM” here seems to mean “virtual RAM” rather than “video RAM”, which the acronym more commonly refers to.
I don’t really feel like they answered their own question: how small could it be? Given the title I thought the article was going to be about pushing things to the limit of what’s possible and even pruning the macos install. But turns out that’s not what the article was about at all. The author merely ran macos in a 4GB VM.
Linux VMs can run effectively on 2GB or less and I’m not really surprised by it. At 512MB I hit problems though, even the debian install fails.
These numbers are huge! About a quarter of the NEO’s 256GB base storage needs to be free just to update the thing. IIRC the last microsoft upgrade asked me to free “only” 30GB for the upgrade process. Modern operating systems are way too bloated. Most users just want the OS to stay in the background while they run their applications. Aside from a few mandatory applications, IMHO most applications should be available as a separate install and not have to be bundled as part of the core.OS.
I think I misunderstood the quote. they are recommending 60GB to be the minimum for the entire VM, not how much needs to be additionally free to update it. I wonder how much space is available for other user files & applications in this VM?
Alfman,
There is an API to test this:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/installing-macos-on-a-virtual-machine
But I have never seen any app. Maybe you can download this sample and run a “for” loop around it?
Or nevermind… apparently the OS image comes with exactly the minimum supported hardware restrictions:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/vzmacosconfigurationrequirements
Re: the sub 512MB Debian install, my preference is a netinstall but DietPi is quite handy for quickly setting up a lightweight system.
https://dietpi.com/
The fact that the MacBook Neo can run VMs makes it all the more infuriating that the much more powerful iPad Pro can not.
alexvoda,
Sure, the hardware is more than capable. A VM could clearly be useful for owners who wish it would run what they please, but that violates apple’s goals for the platform. IOS is designed to lock owners down and not give them a key. For better or worse owner restrictions have created a very lucrative business model for apple.