Running Windows 10 on M1 Mac with QEMU & Hypervisor.Framework

M1 Macs don’t have support for Bootcamp, so you can’t install Windows through normal means. So, in order to have a working Windows environment, you have to do it all in a virtual machine. The problem is that QEMU isn’t optimized for M1 Macs, and virtualization is very slow… unless it uses MacOS’ Hypervisor.Framework. While this isn’t quite as performant as paid solutions (like Parallels), it works fast enough for most people and is completely free.

Updated 1/6/22: Building your own QEMU is no longer needed. It’s been merged into the main branch! Just make sure your QEMU version is 6.2 or higher.

Let’s get started.

1. Prerequisites

   • M1 Mac
   • 32GB of Free Space
   • Xcode or Xcode Command Line Tools (run xcode-select --install to install)
   • QEMU 6.2 or higher

   To install QEMU, install Homebrew and run brew install qemu.

2. Get Windows for ARM

   Go visit the Windows for ARM download page and sign in with a Microsoft account. Then, download the VHDX file.

3. Enable extra display resolutions

   This lets us use higher resolutions at the cost of more RAM usage, because the virtual display is actually just a bunch of data in your RAM. Right now, the only working display option is ramfb so we’ll just have to modify it.

   curl -L https://git.io/J3w5c | tar xz
   dd if=/dev/zero of=pflash0.img bs=1m count=64
   dd if=/dev/zero of=pflash1.img bs=1m count=64
   dd if=QEMU_EFI.fd of=pflash0.img conv=notrunc
   dd if=QEMU_VARS.fd of=pflash1.img conv=notrunc
   

4. Make the QCOW2 boot disk file

   Now that you’ve built QEMU, the Windows VHDX is probably done downloading. We want to convert it to a QCOW2 file, so we can take snapshots of it and compress it.

   qemu-img convert -O qcow2 Windows.vhdx disk.qcow2

   Remember to change Windows.vhdx to the path to your own vhdx file. Now grab your beverage of choice; this might take a while. Once it’s done, delete the original VHDX file, as we no longer need it.

5. How to take a QCOW2 snapshot

   We are going to take a snapshot of our QCOW2 file, just in case anything goes wrong during installation. That way, we won’t have to redownload the VHDX file.

   qemu-img snapshot disk.qcow2 -c brand_new

   Remember to take another differently-named snapshot after installation is complete (I like to name mine clean_install). If something goes wrong and you need to revert to a snapshot, just do

   qemu-img snapshot disk.qcow2 -l to list snapshots, and

   qemu-img snapshot disk.qcow2 -a SNAPSHOT_NAME to revert to a snapshot.

6. Get VirtIO drivers

   Download the LATEST VirtIO driver ISO for Windows. We need these for networking, or else Windows won’t have any internet access!

7. Create start script

   Finally. It’s time to start up the virtual machine. Use your favorite text editor to create start.sh:

   qemu-system-aarch64 \
       -accel hvf \
       -cpu host \
       -smp 4 -m 2048 \
       -M virt,highmem=off
       -device qemu-xhci \
       -device usb-kbd \
       -device usb-tablet \
       -drive file=disk.qcow2,if=none,id=windows \
       -device nvme,drive=windows,serial="dummyserial" \
       -nic user,model=virtio \
       -drive file="virtio.iso",media=cdrom,if=none,id=drivers \
       -device usb-storage,drive=drivers \
       -monitor stdio \
       -device ramfb \
       -drive file=pflash0.img,format=raw,if=pflash,readonly=on \
       -drive file=pflash1.img,format=raw,if=pflash
   

8. Set Up Windows

   Run chmod 755 start.sh then ./start.sh to run Windows.

   When QEMU first starts up, select the window and press ESC before it actually starts booting. This will make it enter the BIOS so we can configure it.

   Set your display resolution up to 1440x900 in Device Manager > OVMF Platform Configuration (or any other resolution you want to use). It’s limited to a relatively small resolution, due to standard VGA for ARM64 not being supported, and having to use ramfb instead. This may change in the future, but we have to use ramfb for now.

   Save the settings, and select Reset in the main BIOS menu to test out your new resolution. Then, just set up Windows.

   You’ll notice that Windows doesn’t have Internet access at first. To enable Internet access, once you have opened your desktop, open up a Command Prompt terminal as Administrator:

   bcdedit.exe -set TESTSIGNING ON

   Reboot, then open Device Manager in Windows. Select View>Devices by Connection in the top menu bar.

   Select ACPU ARM64-based PC>Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System>PCI Express Root Complex>Unknown device.

   Right click ‘Unknown device’ then select Update Drivers>Browse my computer for drivers>D:\NetKVM\w10\ARM64. Click next to install the driver. Once that’s done, shutdown, take a snapshot, and remove the following files from your start script:

   -drive file="virtio.iso",media=cdrom,if=none,id=drivers \
   -device usb-storage,drive=drivers \
   

9. Optimize Windows (optional)

   Windows isn’t really expecting to be run inside a virtual machine, so we’re going to add some small tweaks to make it faster. We will disable printing, defragmentation, pagefiles, and hibernation.

   Open Command prompt and run:

   REM Disable Printing
   sc stop "Spooler"
   sc config "Spooler" start= disabled
   REM Disable Automatic Defragmentation
   schtasks /Delete /TN "\Microsoft\Windows\Defrag\ScheduledDefrag" /F
   REM Disable Pagefile
   wmic computersystem set AutomaticManagedPagefile=FALSE
   wmic pagefileset delete
   REM Disable Hibernation
   powercfg -h off
   

   If you want to save some space, and you’ve taken a second snapshot of the fully set-up virtual machine, you can run

   qemu-img snapshot disk.qcow2 -d brand_new

   to delete the first snapshot.

10. Done! You’re now done installing Windows 10 on your M1 Mac! It’s not as fast as Parallels Desktop, but it works well and is fast enough to do most things. It also doesn’t cost $100, which is quite nice.