This can be useful if, for example, you prefer to use the Windows versions of Office or other cross-platform apps on your Mac. That’s a lot of limitations, and that’s probably why Microsoft would rather have Mac users use Windows 11 via a Windows 365 Cloud PC. However, Parallels Desktop for Mac still has great power user features such as Coherence mode, which lets Mac users hide their Windows 11 virtual machine and run Mac and Windows apps side by side.

Virtualization-based Security (VBS), a Windows 11 feature that lets users create and isolate a secure region of memory from the OS is also unsupported.

Nested virtualization isn’t supported, which means that you can’t use the Windows Subsystem for Android, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, or the Windows Sandbox environment.

If 64-bit ARM apps or emulated 圆4 or x86 apps work fine, 32-bit ARM apps are not supported.

Any app or game that requires DirectX 12 or OpenGL 3.3 or newer won’t work.

However, running Windows 11 on ARM in a virtual machine on macOS has several limitations:

I’ve been using Parallels Desktop for Mac to run Windows 11 on ARM on my Apple Silicon Mac for a while, and it works really well. Using Windows 11 with Parallels Desktop for Mac has some limitations All Macs with M1 and M2 chips have dropped support for Boot Camp, Apple’s multi-boot utility that allows owners of Intel-based Macs to install Windows. Unfortunately, it’s still not possible to run Windows 11 on ARM natively on Apple Silicon Macs. “Parallels Desktop version 18 is an authorized solution for running Arm versions of Windows 11 Pro and Windows 11 Enterprise in a virtual environment on its platform on Apple M1 and M2 computers,” the company explained. Well, fast forward to 2023, Microsoft now says that there are two supported options for running Windows 11 on a Mac: Windows 365 and Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Back in 2021, Parallels Desktop for Mac 17 was the first version of the virtualization software to add support for Windows 11 on macOS, though Microsoft said at the time that it was “not a supported scenario.” Microsoft has finally recognized Parallels Desktop for Mac as a supported solution for running Windows 11 on ARM on Apple Silicon Macs.

Mac parallels windows11