macOS

Running macOS guests is experimentally supported since Lima v2.1.

• macOS only
• With Homebrew

limactl start template:macos

limactl start template:homebrew-macos

The user password is randomly generated and stored in the ~/password file in the VM. Consider changing it after the first login.

limactl shell macos cat /Users/${USER}.guest/password

Difference from Linux guests

• Password login is enabled
• Password-less sudo is disabled, except for /sbin/shutdown -h now (see Sudo — this is not currently configurable on macOS)
• Several features are not implemented yet. See Caveats below.

Caveats

• No support for turning off the video display.
• No support for automatic port forwarding. Use ssh -L to manually set up port forwarding, or, use the vzNAT network to access the guest by its IP.
• No support for installing custom caCerts

Plain mode

containerd and automatic port forwarding are not available on macOS guests regardless of the mode, so plain mode additionally disables only the host directory mounts.