Testing Monterey on an M1 Mac
QCan I test macOS 12 running in a Virtual Machine on my M1 iMac?
AAt present, no. Of the two major vendors of virtualisation software for Macs, VMware doesn’t yet offer a product which runs native on Apple’s M1 Macs, while the other contender, Parallels, does run native but doesn’t yet support running macOS in a virtual machine (VM).
Parallels already runs the ARM version of Microsoft Windows and several different varieties of Linux, again built only for ARM processors. There’s quite a lot of work required in getting macOS Big Sur to work reliably, and Parallels anticipates having that ready for release by the autumn of this year.
Hopefully that will also include support for Monterey VMs too. VMware is a bit further behind, and is still working on its ARM native release and support for Linux and Windows VMs. Initially it stated that it had no plans to get macOS to work, but once Apple silicon Macs have a choice of two releases of macOS, that might change. It appears unlikely that any macOS virtualisation is going to be available from VMware until at least the end of this year.
Monterey betas can be run in a VM on an Intel Mac, or you could install the beta on an external disk for your M1 Mac. Whatever you do, though, don’t let a beta-release of macOS near a production Mac which you rely on, unless it’s in a VM. Betas can do terrible things to computers, and sometimes put them out of action for many days or weeks.