How To Install macOS Big Sur Beta on VMware Fusion & Parallels Desktop

36 thoughts on “How To Install macOS Big Sur Beta on VMware Fusion & Parallels Desktop”

1. Beta 4 fixes login loop issue on VMware.

   1. I upgraded (installed on a fresh VMDK disk) Beta 2 to Beta 3 with no problems but can’t upgrade Beta 3 to Beta 4. When it reboots at the end of the install App it simply fails half way through the Appple Logo boot process (progress bar about half way) and goes back and reboots again in loop. Anyone any ideas?

2. On macOS Catalina systems, Fusion operates as it always has using kernel extensions to provide functionality. However on Big Sur systems, Fusion operates entirely without kexts.

3. Can I upgrade my Big Sur beta 1 to beta 2 inside the vm, ie. Can I just use System Preferences Software Update ? Will that work, or do I need to download Beta 2 externally again and make a new installer and a new VM?

   1. It is never recommended from my understanding, but for the record, I was able to.

      1. I made a snapshot first, and cloned… Tried it (upgrade beta 1 to beta 2 with System Prefs), and it downloads, preps it, then just reboots. Any attempt to login again just logs you back out…

4. Pingback: Michael Tsai - Blog - VMware Fusion Tech Preview for Big Sur

5. Did someone find how to fix the login loop on VMWare fusion?

   1. Create a second admin user before upgrading that does not have iCloud setup, and use that account to login.

      1. Can you eventually use the iCloud login?

6. did someone found the solution for the login loop with VMWare fusion?
   fresh Catalina install direct update to BigSur … looping on the login screen

   I did it 3 times now… but no luck (first time with the VMTools …)

7. Got Big Sur working on Parallels using the instructions above (by upgrading a fully updated Catalina install).
   – Clicking the area where the clock would be, crashes the OS, and takes me back to the login screen.
   – Setting up iCloud also has the same effect. It crashes the OS and takes me back to the login screen.
   – installing Parallels tools after installing BS results in a non-booting OS (had to revert to an older snapshot of the VM)
   – all keys are working (including the 1, 2, t and y)
   – display perfomance is painfully slow. in systemm profiler it shows a 3MB display adapter even though it is set to 1G in Parallels

8. I am still seeing the issue where the menubar items are not being displayed (no clock, etc) – and clicking in that area will cause WindowServer to crash (running on Parallels). I recommend that everyone who is encountering this issue log a feedback report with Apple so that they can take a look at it (I don’t think it’s Parallels-related…I’ve seen and heard reports that it’s happening on Fusion as well – but it would be nice to have that verified).

   1. Still seeing in beta 2

9. You have an error in the command here:

   hdiutil detach /Users/Shared/macOSInstaller.sparsebundle

   It should be:

   hdiutil detach /Volumes/Install\ macOS\ Beta

   1. Fixed Joe,

      Thanks!

10. …And I forgot to take a fresh snapshot before attempting to install 10.16 b on that VM – it does not want to boot 🙁

    1. Matthias, did you install the VM tools? I’ve received multiple emails from users telling me that after installing tools they vm would not boot.

       1. As far as I remember the VM Tools were installed on the VM before I tried to upgrade. I have to say I am a bit confused about the role of the VM Tools, it is not clear to me whether they do harm on the host system or the client VM.

          But I saw another interesting post from paulrbarnard on https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/649774?page=3: It seems the AppleID of a developer needs to be used on the VM. A good summary is provided by schrodinger_cat on that same page.

          Seems I have to start from scratch and make sure not to install Parallels Tools..

          1. So in my next iteration I started again from a 10.15 VM but this time without Parallels Tools installed and while still in 10.15 I created a second admin account without password (scary…), and upgraded again to 10.16. I could log in using the admin account without password, but not the ‘normal’ admin account. At some stage I used my AppleID with the passwordless account, and from that point on I could login using the other admin account (with a password). Very strange behaviour.

11. Thanks a lot, setting devices.smbios.board_id got me going under Parallels. I also had to delete all my snapshots, to be able to resize the VM’s disk, since I ‘only’ had 27 GB free, and the installer wanted 23 GB more free space 🙁

12. Hi,

    I somehow got hold of the Install macOS Beta.app, so instead of doing the upgrade via the beta profile, I created a .dmg file for my VMware Fusion and used it to create a virtual machine from scratch.

    Now, regarding the disk size – I’ve put 50 GB instead of the default 40. I booted the machine, the Recovery OS told me I have about 42 GB of free space and need about 7.9 more. So I launched the Disk Utility from the Recovery Mode and somehow it turned out that there is over 10 GB of free, unallocated space. I’ve added it to the disk and I was able to install Big Sur. Right now my VM with a clean install is about 23 GB.

    I’ve also installed VM Tools and the system boots up without problems. The only significant issue I have is that I can’t see the menu bar icons and the clock while having the light appearance enabled. I can see them in Dark Mode. However every time I click on the clock to open up Control Center, it logs me out back to the login screen. The issue was confirmed by at least one of my colleagues who also installed Big Sur on VMware. I didn’t have a chance to check it on a non-virtualized system.

    Just FYI, I don’t have the board-id = “Mac-E1008331FDC96864” setting in my config file.

    1. I did prettty much the same thing and have a fully working system with Beta2.

       I also have issues with the icons not appearing on the menu bar. Also clicking on anthing to do with Control Center or Time or Users in the Menu Bar logs me out.

       I had an issue when trying to shrink my drive. I used terminal to run “cat /dev/zero > bigfile” to zero out the unused disk space. When the command terminated (errored out as disk was full as with previous versions) the system logged me out. Every time I tried to log in it tried to restart terminal and logged me out again. It was not lack of disk space as I deleted ‘bigfile’ havinmg booted into my old Catalina drive. It seems that when commands error out you get looged out. So if you have something thats errored out, Macos tries to restart it when you log back in. I had to restore to a previous snaphot to get a working system again. If you want to zero the unused space on the disk you can’t afford to have a command shell erroring out in Terminal …… a solution is to SSH in and run a command shell that way. When it errors out you can simply delete the file, exit, shutdown from the gui and compact the disk.

    2. Re Control Center logging you out: If I access Maps it also crashes and returns me to the logon screen. Suspect this could be all part of the same issue and maybe due to the 3D Acceleration not being available. Just an idea.

13. Using Fusion 11.5.5 on Mojave 10.14.6, modifying the vmx file was unnecessary. I did a fresh install of Catalina 10.15.4 in a new VM, copied the macOS Beta installer to the VM, and ran the installer. It installed and booted fine. Note that I did not install the VMware Tools to the VM prior to installing macOS Beta. I had a prior Catalina VM with the Tools installed, and upgrading to the macOS Beta resulted in failures at the login screen after the Beta upgrade. So do the Beta upgrade on a fresh Catalina install and it should work fine (at least from 10.15.4).

    Please note, if I added ‘board-id.reflectHost = “TRUE”‘ to the .vmx, the Fusion refused to boot the VM with an error that the vmx file is corrupted.

    1. I installed the VM in Fusion 11.5.5 with macOS Beta and installation worked but I am unable to login. Once I enter the password, it does not login.

       1. Getting reports that VM’s are not accepting certain keys. 1, 2, t and y keys. You need to hold FN key to make them work.

          Not sure if your password has one of those letters/numbers in it.

14. Didn’t work with your Parallels entries.
    I used
    devices.mac_hw_model=””
    devices.smbios.board_id=””
    which I found on https://forum.parallels.com/threads/macos-big-sur-and-parallels-desktop.350219/page-2#post-868663

15. This solved the issue: https://forum.parallels.com/threads/macos-big-sur-and-parallels-desktop.350219/page-2#post-868663

    Specify the Mac model and board ID:

    devices.mac_hw_model=””
    devices.smbios.board_id=””

    To get , execute this in the Terminal: sysctl hw.model
    To get , execute this: ioreg -l | grep board-id

    1. Thanks Christian!

       Are you saying that the entries should be blank?

       devices.mac_hw_model=””
       devices.smbios.board_id=””

       Or

       devices.mac_hw_model=”MacBookPro16,1″
       devices.smbios.board_id=”Mac-E1008331FDC96864″

       Corey mentioned that the entries should not need to be edited. I have edited the article a bunch, maybe the previous entries were wrong ?

       Were you able to get it to work? (just now saw your original comment)

       1. It’s working with those values. However I keep having 3MB of VRAM so everything is extremely slow, even after installing the Parallels Tools (which doesn’t seem to do anything).

          1. I just got the same setup running and 3MB VRAM. I believe we can fix this with Parallels Tools but I think in this case installing that messes up the setup.

             1. As said, it doesn’t fix the issue by installing the Parallels Tools. Even the shared folder won’t work (and it does not messes up with the setup either).

16. I get this error, but these steps did not work for me.

17. Can you provide more info about your Parallels setup?

    I managed to find out details about the existing instructions, assuming a Catalina VM is prepared:

    1. Right-click the VM in the VM list
    2. Select “Configure”
    3. Go to Hardware > Boot Order
    4. Expand “Advanced Settings”; paste the devices.mac_hw_model etc. into the “Boot flags”
    5. Adjust the devices.mac_hw_model to the “Model Identifier” value from your real Mac’s “About this Mac” > “System Report” screen, and the serial to the Serial No from the same screen — cf. https://jerbecause.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/creating-a-dep-vm-using-parallels-desktop/

    I managed to download the Beta installer and create a bootable .dmg file, cf: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

    I then mounted this .dmg as a CD/DVD in the Parallels VM’s Hardware settings. Couldn’t find another place where .dmg’s are accepted. Booting works, too, and I was able to erase the disk, but installation still showed “The operation couldn’t be completed. (BIErrorDomain error 3.)”.

    I tried to install from the .dmg as a new Parallels VM, but same problem. The folks at the Parallels forum seem oblivious to a fix, too, so I wonder what you did right 🙂

    1. I managed to get the installation working on Parallels with the updated provided informations on this post.
       Everything you did is correct, except for the boot flags, you need to add the following (inline, it’s important, not a new line between each of them), where :

       1.
       devices.mac_hw_model=”MacBookPro16,1″
       ^— value to replaced with the output of the following command:
       sysctl hw.model

       2.
       devices.smbios.board_id=”Mac-E1008331FDC96864″
       ^— value to replaced with the output of the following command:
       ioreg -l | grep board-id

       Everything works except the provided VRAM apparently. I cannot have the one I set and keep having 3MB, so everything is extremely slow for now.

       https://i.imgur.com/VQpsnAt.png

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