However, it will eventually offer another way for Mac users to access Windows on a Mac including Windows 11 eventually. Windows 365 is a new Cloud service by Microsoft that will allow Mac users to use Windows 10 and 11 online in any browser.Īt the moment, Microsoft Windows 365 is only available to Windows 365 Enterprise customers but is due to be rolled out to smaller businesses in Fall 2021. We have indicated in these reviews which methods support the M1 chip and which do not.Īt the moment, Parallels 17 is the only software that officially supports running Windows on M1 Macs although there is a Preview version of VMWare Fusion that now supports Apple Silicon M1 chips too.
You can install Windows on Apple Silicon M1 Macs although not all of these methods support it.
How To Play Windows Games on a MacĪll of the following methods of installing Windows on a Mac are suitable for playing Windows games on a Mac but some are more suitable than other depending on the game you want to play.įor example, some games such as Valorant will not work with virtualization software because they are protected by the anti-cheat software Vanguard which will not run in a virtual environment.
You can find full instructions on how to run Windows 11 on a Mac here. Windows 11 requires a physical TPM chip to run and although Macs don’t have one, Parallels can now emulate a virtual TPM chip so that Windows 11 will run on both Intel and M1 Macs. Windows 11 was released by Microsoft on October 5th 2021 and you can now install Windows 11 on a Mac including M1 Macs. In fact, Apple actively encourages it by providing Boot Camp in Intel Macs and there’s no issues with the Windows EULA installing Windows on a Mac using any of these methods. Installing Windows on a Mac (or any other computer) is perfectly legal. If you’re worried whether installing Windows on a Mac is illegal, there’s no need to. However, we always recommend backing-up your Mac to an external hard drive before making any major changes to it. It’s also extremely easy to install Microsoft Windows on a Mac nowadays and Virtual Machines like Parallels make it easy even for beginners to do it. You can simply delete the installation and reinstall it. If the Windows installation were to get a virus or corrupted in some way, it wouldn’t damage macOS. Running Windows on a Mac effectively isolates the rest of your Mac from any potential problems with viruses, malware or adware. Virtual Machine (Best For Beginners)Īre There Any Risks Installing Windows on Mac?īecause installing Windows on a Mac involves separating it into either a virtual environment or a separate partition on your hard drive, there are absolutely no risks installing Windows on your Mac. Are There Any Risks Installing Windows on Mac?.
While the game did have some lag, it ran well most of the time as you can see below. The CrossOver team successfully installed some Windows software on M1 Macs, including the desktop version of the popular game Among Us and even Team Fortress 2. I can’t tell you how cool that is there is so much emulation going on under the covers. That’s incredible when you consider that we’re on literally the cheapest Apple Silicon device you can buy – one that gets thermally throttled and is missing a GPU core.
The latest version of CrossOver emulates Windows Intel binaries on macOS through Rosetta 2 technology, which emulates x86 binaries on the new ARM Mac hardware. While Apple and Microsoft have confirmed that the new ARM-based Macs no longer support Windows (at least for now), CodeWeavers developers were able to run CrossOver 20 on Macs with M1 chip.
In other words, it allows users to install and run Windows software on other operating systems without even installing a full version of Windows as you do on a virtual machine. If you’re unfamiliar with CrossOver, it’s a platform based on the open-source Wine project that can run the Windows environment on macOS and Linux. However, CodeWeavers announced that CrossOver 20 now works on Apple Silicon Macs, which means that the new M1 Macs can run Windows software right on macOS. We already know that the new Macs with M1 chip can run both Intel and ARM apps made for macOS and iOS, but Mac users who rely on Windows for some specific software have lost Boot Camp support.