Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. Free for personal, educational or evaluation use under the terms of the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License on Windows, Mac. VirtualBox is free, enterprise-ready virtualization software for Windows users. Developed by the Oracle Corporation, the tool lets users run different operating systems on their computers. It’s a feature-rich product and is one of the only professional virtualization tools available as open-source software.It’s updated regularly by its community of users, and Oracle ensures that the. VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use.For a thorough introduction to virtualization and VirtualBox.
Windows, macOS – which one do you want to use today? On a traditional setup, you’re stuck with one or the other. But with virtual box, you actually have macOS on a Windows PC.
It’s the freedom that computer users have enjoyed with Linux and other operating systems.
But Apple has made it difficult to install their operating system on anything other than their own hardware. All of that is changing, and Virtual Box is responsible for it and the rise of the Hackintosh.
New to hackintosh? Learn more about it in our what is hackintosh? overview.
Note: A lot of people will be able to get a mac virtual machine one Windows running smoothly, but sound doesn’t seem to work well. That’s really not an issue because you’ll still be able to access all of your apps and software.
I also recommend that you have access to a real Mac. You might be able to find some distributions of the High Sierra ISO online, but there is always a risk when downloading from an unofficial source. Instead, borrow a Mac from a friend, or use your own and download the High Sierra OS from the App Store.
Check out our high sierra installation guide for hackintosh
Everything You Need to Get Started with Installing macOS on VirtualBox
Before we go through the steps on how to install macOS on Virtual Box, let’s get everything together that you’ll need to get started.
- Open up your Mac
- Go to the App Store
- Type in “High Sierra”
You’ll want to search for your desired operating system (we’ll be using High Sierra), and Download it.
Note: You’ll need a decent computer to be able to run Virtual Box. Your computer will need to meet these minimum requirements:
- Dual core processor
- 4GB Ram or higher
- 64-bit
If your computer doesn’t meet these requirements, you won’t be able to run macOS properly. You’ll be able to download VirtualBox from the official website. I’m not going to go through the installation process, as the website will have all of the information you need to be able to install VirtualBox.
I do recommend that you read all of the documentation and ask any questions that you have in the community section of the website.
VirtualBox 6.0 was just released, so it’s definitely a great time to get started with your own macOS.
Extract macOS Sierra
Make sure you’ve downloaded High Sierra, and then you’ll want to run a few commands from your terminal . You’ll be able to open the terminal at: Applications > Utilities > Terminal. Once inside of the terminal, you’ll want to run the following commands:
Go to your desktop and rename the file, removing the “.cdr” extension. You need this extension to read “.iso” for it to work properly.
You’ve successfully created your own ISO file so that you can bootup your macOS.
The next step is to copy the file over to your Windows machine (using a large USB drive seems to work best). This file will be mounted in your virtual machine later on in the article, so it’s very important that this step is completed successfully.
Creating a mac Virtual Machine on Windows
You’ll want to create a virtual machine, and this is really easy. You’ll open up VirtualBox and click New. You’ll want to have the following parameters selected or entered before clicking Next.
- Name: High Sierra
- Type: Mac OS X
- Version: Mac OS X (64-bit)
Pay attention when selecting the version because you may find that High Sierra is offered as a version when you go to install it. But if it’s not, you can just choose the settings I listed above and they should work fine.
You’ll then be proceeding through all of the settings.
When you come up to the RAM setting, you’ll want to be generous. VirtualBox requires a minimum of 4GB or RAM to run, but the more the better.
Why?
You’ll want to provide at least 4GB to your macOS, or 4096MB to be precise. A general rule of thumb is that if you can spare it, supply more RAM to your virtual machine. RAM will allow the operating system to put more information into memory and retrieve it faster.
For better overall performance, supply as much RAM as you can.
The next steps are also important, and they’ll include:
- Hard Disk: Choose the “Create a virtual hard disk now” setting.
- Choose VDI when choosing the hard disk type.
- Choose Fixed Size instead of Dynamic for added speed.
- Set the size of the drive to at least 25GB.
You’ll now have your virtual machine using the RAM and disk space properly, and you’ll have to work your way through a few screen prompts before having everything setup properly.
Configuring Your VirtualBox to Run macOS High Sierra
We’ve made a lot of progress so far, and now it’s time to configure your virtual machine properly. You’ll see in the main window of VirtualBox that “High Sierra” is listed. Click on this and then click on the “Settings” button.
You’ll want to go to “System” and make sure that the following are unchecked on the Motherboard tab:
- Floppy
- Network
Click on the Processor tab and make sure that you have 2 or more CPUs set for your virtual machine.
The next few settings are rather simple:
- Display: Video Memory with a minimum of 128MB
- Storage: Click “Empty” and then click on the CD at the top right. Choose your High Sierra ISO file
Now you’ll need to click “Ok,” and save all of the changes you’ve made. Close out your VirtualBox now.
Apple is very strict on the system that their operating system runs on, so it’s very important that you do your best to configure your virtual machine in such a way that it tricks the installer to thinking you’re on a retail machine.
We’ll now be going into the Windowscommand prompt.
You’ll do this by:
- Clicking the Start Menu
- Typing “Command Prompt”
- Right-clicking on the Command Prompt desktop app
- Choosing Run as administrator
It’s very important to follow all of the following command prompts exactly. Your goal is to run each command, one by one, hitting the Enter button and waiting for the command to complete successfully.
Remember that VirtualBox needs to be closed before running these commands, or it won’t work properly.
You have to make sure that the virtual machine is properly named “High Sierra” for this method to work. If not, you’ll be able to go back and make changes to the name to get everything to work properly.
Once all of the commands are completed, and there are no errors, you’ll then be able to open up your VirtualBox and get macOS High Sierra installed properly on VirtualBox.
It’s a long process, but we’re almost done with your installation.
Running VirtualBox and the macOS Installer
You’ve almost learned how to install macOS on VirtualBox entirely, and we’re on the home stretch. You’ll want to open up your VirtualBox and then click on your virtual machine that you set up earlier.
Now, click “Start.”
There will be a lot of information displayed on the screen as everything starts running. I recommend stepping away from the machine and letting it run for a few minutes before coming back. Some errors can hang for 5 minutes or longer.
If you’ve done everything properly, you can be confident that the installer will boot properly.
You’ll eventually be presented with the option to pick a Language. If you’ve reached this point, you’re doing very well and are almost ready to run your macOS.
The next steps can be followed:
- Choose your desired language, and click
- Click “Disk Utility” and then
- Click “View” and then “Show All Devices.”
- Click on your empty virtual drive that has been setup and click “Erase.”
- Choose the following settings:
- Name: Macintosh HD
- Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- Scheme: GUID Partition Map
- Click “Erase” and close Disk Utility when the process is complete.
- Click “Reinstall macOS.”
- Click “Continue.”
You’ll come up to one point where you’ll be asked to choose a hard drive, and you’ll want to select the Macintosh HD partition that you just created with the Disk Utility.
We’ve successfully copied all of the files on the virtual machine, but we’re not done just yet.
Exit your virtual machine and then go back to your virtual machine’s settings. You’ll need to change up your Storage settings. Click on your ISO for High Sierra in the “Storage Tree.” You’ll click that CD icon just like we did earlier and then choose “Remove Disk from Virtual Disk.”
You need to do this to unlink the ISO from your virtual machine.
Start up your virtual machine and you should come across a black screen with the EFI Internal Shell. You’ll want to look for FS1. If this is listed in yellow, click on the virtual machine and then type fs1: and hit the Enter button.
You should be in the fs1 directory.
Type in the following commands:
- cd “macOS Install Data”
- cd “Locked Files”
- cd “Boot Files”
Now we’ll run the installer by running: boot.efi and hitting enter.
If everything goes well, you’ll come across a graphical installer and will just have to work through the prompts. The virtual machine will reboot eventually and then you’ll need to go through the settings and the rest of the setup process.
Soon enough, you’ll be right inside of macOS, where you’ll be able to start using your mac virtual machine on Windows.
Having a virtualbox mac OS is the easiest method of using mac as and when you need it. In addition, using virtualbox is far less complicated than the dual boot hackintosh method we have looked at previously.
When macOS Mojave was officially released, since it was new, it had lots of bugs and problems. There were plenty of issues that some of which we dug in an attempt to fix those even until now. By the time more and more users install and use it on their Macs or on a virtual machine VMware or VirtualBox, Apple realized the problems it had with it. Here’s how to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox.
In order to fix those, what Apple did was releasing several updates. But one of the problems was a huge part of the users that couldn’t even update their Mac. However, you can fix it with the instructions we’ve provided for you. When you fixed that, you may still don’t be interested to know how to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox, or maybe you don’t fix the problem. This may be because this doesn’t seem important to you and take some time to fiddle with it. But that is not basically the case.
A software update is a free download for an application or operating system which primarily provides fixes for features and options that have a problem. The most important part is, it will fix and improve security to protect from loopholes, faults, glitches that are vulnerable to your computer. Other than that, an update may also provide new features, better performance, more options. If you want to be protected and out of problems importantly, you may want to update your computer to the recent version. Start with how to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox.
Which One to Choose – The APFS or HFS Image
When it comes to updating your Mac specifically installed on VirtualBox, there’s a scenario surrounding. There are two types of images you can use to install Mojave on VirtualBox. The APFS (Apple File System image) and the HFS (Hierarchical File System image). The question is, which one you should use whether the APFS or HFS image to update your Mojave better. Let’s break this down.
While previous versions of macOS still use and support HFS file systems, from previous versions to High Sierra. As long as VirtualBox supports it, you can use HFS images to install or update macOS, High Sierra or previous versions on VirtualBox smoothly. But since APFS is the newer version of macOS file system, it isn’t compatible with the prior version of macOS which doesn’t work with the previous version of macOS. However, the HFS version works faster and smoother than the APFS version.
With Mojave release, Apple released the new APFS for Mojave and maybe newer version. If you are running Mojave on VirtualBox, APFS will not work since VirtualBox doesn’t support it. But you can fix it with a bootloader, here’s how to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox. In this post, I’ll show how to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox.
- Related:How to Upgrade macOS Mojave to macOS Catalina
How to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox
Whether you’ve installed Mojave with HFS or APFS image, you can, however, update Mojave. Since HFS works faster and is supported by VirtualBox, you can update easily and more reliable. But if you are using an APFS for some reason, you can also update Mojave but in the least tricky way. Don’t worry, we’ll show you both ways how you can do it. Here’s how to update your macOS to the latest version on Virtualbox. So let’s see how to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox.
Go ahead and switch on the Mojave from VirtualBox.
Start VM
Now open System Preferences from the desktop menu and click on Software Update.
On the Software Update, you’ll likely see the Update Now click on it.
Update Now
This will ask you to download and restart the Mac, click on it.
This will download first and then reboot your Mac which will take longer than usual loading on the Apple logo. That will end up with only a black screen. Just switch off the Mac and download the following file.
Bootloader Update Image: This will fix the stuck on the black screen with a simple step.
Goto Settings of the macOS machine then Storage and click on the add virtual disk button.
In this tab, and click choose existing hard disk.
VirtualBox – Question
From the browser, choose the image file you’ve downloaded.
Virtualbox Software For Mac Windows 10
Once you’ve done, click Ok on the VM settings window.
Now it’s time to fix the issue. To do that, Start the machine and press ESC key to skip the startup.nsh
Skip startup.nsh
Now type fs1:update.nsh then hit Enter to boot up the machine with the installer image.
The updating will begin and just sit back and relax. It will take much longer as much as 15 – 30 minutes. It may be sooner if you’ve assigned more resources.
Updating
When it’s done, you’ll boot straightly into the usual booting process. Sign in to your account and you’ve eventually updated to the latest version of macOS Mojave successfully.
How To Use Virtualbox Mac
After you’re done with updating, you can remove the Bootloader Update file from the machine. Now, you can use Mojave without any problem. You can also update your macOS machine to the coming update without the disk.
Virtualbox For Mac Review
That should be all that’s needed. And you’re all set! That was all about how to Update macOS Mojave To The Latest Version on VirtualBox. If you’d like to tell us something we’re good to hear from you, let us know in the comments down below.