Unfortunately, if you have an Apple Silicon Mac (with the M1 chip), you won't have access to Boot Camp at all. Also, while you’re logged into Windows, you’ll lose access to macOS, so you can’t use your Windows and Mac apps simultaneously. While Boot Camp is free, you’ll need to purchase a Windows license if you want to use all features of the Windows edition you install. This contrasts with virtual machines, which can only use a set percentage of resources (since your host OS is still running). While logged into Windows, you can run Windows applications at full-speed using all your available memory and processor cores. This allows you to choose whether to log into Windows or macOS every time you boot your Mac-a process known as dual-booting. The Boot Camp Assistant app sets aside a portion of your hard drive to install Windows. While the VirtualBox software itself is free, you may need to license your copy of Windows installed in the VM if you want to use it long-term.īoot Camp is a free utility that comes with your Mac that allows you to run Windows alongside macOS. Making the process even harder, VirtualBox doesn’t offer any sort of technical support to users, so you’ll have to find help in the free guides on its website or in the user forums. Read more: How to Use VirtualBox: User's Guide Creating a new virtual machine is much more time-consuming than in Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion Player, and you’ll need to know details such as the amount of RAM, CPU cores, and hard drive space to allocate to your VM.

The VirtualBox interface can be intimidating, as it shows a lot of technical details and specifications without many tips or descriptions for beginners. The interface looks pretty dated and isn’t as streamlined as other virtual machine software, though VirtualBox has made some improvements that give it more polish. VirtualBox supports a great number of guest operating systems going all the way back to Windows 98, and you can even run your own servers. It’s designed with developers and IT professionals in mind, so VirtualBox provides you with a great deal of control over your virtual environments. VirtualBox is a free and open source virtual machine software from Oracle.

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