We tested this by downloading a 27GB application, observing that our macOS available free space reflected the download, then uninstalling it. There’s also a handy “Free Up Disk Space” tool that lets you recover free space if things get a little tight. This doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice all of that space at once, and Parallels will only use what it needs (up to your capacity limit). Parallels takes care of your virtual machine’s disk space with a capacity limit, starting at 256GB. This means that if you want to transfer your virtual machine to another Mac, you’ll have to transfer the encrypted vTPM data, which is stored in the macOS keychain (Parallels has an article explaining how to do this). Parallels Desktop 17 and above includes virtual Trusted Module Platform (vTPM) support, which satisfies Microsoft’s requirements for a TPM chip for Windows 11. In our case, Parallels configured a virtual machine with 6 CPU cores and 16GB of RAM, chose a sensible (scaled) resolution for our high DPI MacBook Pro display, shared our existing network connection, and even made macOS files available in Windows. When you finally get into Windows, you’ll see that most things have been taken care of for you. How long the process takes largely depends on how fast your internet speed is.Īctivating Windows 11 gets rid of the annoying watermark and lets you customize your desktop, but core functionality isn’t affected if you don’t activate. The self-contained installer downloads everything you need and walks you through the various macOS permissions you’ll need to enable to get the most out of the software. Parallels Desktop 18 handles the setup process quickly and easily, getting you up and running in record time. You can also use Parallels Desktop to run other ARM-based operating systems on your Mac in just the same manner, opening up the world of Linux virtualization too.

This means that running Windows on an Apple Silicon processor is viable from both a performance and compatibility standpoint. Theoretically, most software that runs on the standard “retail” version of Windows should also run on the ARM version. Windows 10 on ARM had support for 32-bit applications written for x86, and now Windows 11 on ARM adds support for modern 64-bit applications. Because of the inherent differences in the way different processor architectures work, Windows must use an emulation later to enable compatibility on ARM.

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