VMware Fusion Player 12 is now free for personal use on the Mac!
Last month VMware announced VMware Fusion 12. The new version includes macOS Big Sur support for host and guest. VMware also announced that the Mac version is now FREE ($149 Normal Price) for personal use! Previously the Free VMware player was only available on Windows. You can use it to test macOS, Windows 10, or Linux. If you’ve always wanted to set up a macOS VM, now is the time. It’s never been easier to build a test VM, so let’s get started!
Create a New VMware Account.
VMware notes that the free version is available for the following situations.
Fusion Player offers a Personal Use License, available for free with a valid MyVMware account. Home users, Open Source contributors, students, and anyone else can use Fusion Player Free for Non-Commercial activity.
VMware.com
If you are one of those, head over to the registration site.
my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=fusion-player-personal
Once registered you will see your license key, be sure to document this somewhere as you will need it when you install VMware Fusion Player.
If you didn’t and need to find your license key later, use this link.
This link also has a download area to get the the 600MB .dmg installer.
Install VMware Fusion Player 12
Open the .dmg and install Fusion Player 12. NOTE: VMware Fusion 12 requires macOS Catalina or newer. Once complete, open the application and you will be prompted to enter in the license key.
When you first start VMWare Fusion you will get a Select Install Method Screen. In the past you needed to run through a bunch of steps to create a macOS Install .ISO file. Not anymore, you can just drag and drop the full Install macOS Install.app (or Windows iso or Linux .iso) over to this window to begin!
The next screen will let you select macOS installer.app file. You will normally only see the one that you just dragged over. In my case, I have already installed 10.14, 10.15 and 11.0. Click Continue.
You will now see a final finish screen, before you start to configure the VM.
The next screen will tell you that VMware Fusion Player is creating installation media.
You will get a warning about running this VM machine with side channel mitigations enable. It says that side channel mitigations provide enhanced security but lower performance. You can change the settings when the VM is not running in the Advanced panel of the VM.
The new macOS VM is booting to the installer! Once booted, it will be just like you booted into the recovery partition. All you need to do is select Install macOS to begin.
30 Minutes or so later you will be at the Setup Assistant Screen.
Congratulations! You’ve just built your first macOS virtual Machine!
Snapshots
One of the best features about having a macOS virtual machine is snapshots. You can build out a fresh OS and then take a snapshot before you make any changes to the system. Did the test not work? No big deal! Instead of reinstalling the OS to test again, just revert back to a previous snapshot! It’s literally that simple. You can access snapshots from the Virtual Machine menu bar item.
Boot your macOS VM to Recovery Mode
Quick Way – sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused" && sudo reboot
To get back to macOS out just reboot!
Thanks for the tip Mike! More info here – https://mrmacintosh.com/boot-to-internet-recovery-recovery-partition-or-diagnostics-from-macos/
2. Long Way.
If you need to boot the VM to macOS Recovery mode, all you need to do is edit the .vmx file located in /Users/youruserfolder/Virtual Machines/vmnamehere
Right on the file and then select “Show Package Contents”. Inside will be your vmnamehere.vmx file. Right click on that file and edit it with your favorite text editor. Add this line at the very end of the file and click save.
macosguest.forceRecoveryModeInstall = "TRUE"
Start up the VM an you will now be in recovey mode.
To boot back to macOS, open that same file and delete the line that you just added above and click save.
The final step is to delete the .nvram file in that same directory.
NOTE: 10/07/20
I am having trouble booting to recovery with Big Sur Beta, I’m going to run a few more tests. This works fine on 10.14 and 10.15.
If you have any questions, leave a comment below!
VMware Fusion Player macOS
Please, where can I donwload a Fusion Version for macOS 10.15.7 ? Thanks a lot.
My guest OS is Mojave 10.14 has no printer and I cannot figure out how to add it. My searching led me here. Any ideas?
Where to get all the different MaOS iso images?
Greetings,
Do you know if it is possible to download a personal-use VMWare Fusion Player for a Mac 10.14.6 host?
Thanks,
Chele
Hi Chele,
Thanks for the information.
Pete
Hi,
I am running my iMac Late 2012 on macOS Mojave and I have several 32 bit programs I regularly use and don’t want to lose or upgrade, if I used VMware Fusion 12 could I run Mojave and Big Sur. I currentley have VMware Fusion 7.1.1 with windows 7 which I no longer use and does not work.
Thanks
Pete
You can run any Intel version of macOS as a client. But VMware Fusion 12 requires Catalina or Big Sur for the host macOS. So you would need to upgrade your iMac to Catalina or Big Sur before installing Fusion 12.
Hi John,
Thanks for the information, when I upgrade to Big Sur will I lose my 32 bit apps or after I have installed Fusion and Mojave will be able to move them across from the internal drive or my backup drive.
Thanks
Pete
Hi Pete,
I can’t say with certainty what the update will do to your existing apps. In any case you will be able to copy them from your backup drive to the virtual machine. But that will only work for simple standalone apps – some apps will require installation from original media. And you will need to reconfigure app preferences to your liking.
Word of warning: Keep your old backups safely and, if you use Time Machine, don’t let it write to the same drive.
Best with the upgrade, John
Thanks again John.
Pete
If you have problems creating a free account, ie you get the message “access denied”. If you clear browsing data, it should work.
It would have been nice to have a free version for older MacOS10 versions….
it asks for a company name when i register for it. but i dont have a company and i need it for personal use. how do i get the license key
Hello ayushmaan, you do not need a company name. Especially since this is for personal use only, you should be able to leave that blank.
Can we install parrot is on vmware fusions in m1 MacBook Air Apple Silicon chip
Can it be used for cyber security courses
That is a required field. Just type something into it. I typed “Personal Use”.
Hi clear cache worked also for me! I now have my free license
I got the Mac license, but I actually want the Linux license…
How do I get the Linux version license?
I’ve been looking all over the place for it and I don’t find neither the license nor the download .deb, .rpm or .tar for Player Fusion o.Ô
Hi, Did you try this ? https://www.vmware.com/fr/products/workstation-player/workstation-player-evaluation.html
Under “Boot your macOS VM to Recovery Mode”, I can’t make either of those methods work with a Big Sur client VM. Host Catalina a 10.15.7, VMware 12.
My method is to add “Mojave Recovery Boot Image.vmdk” as a second disk, tell VMware to boot from it, and any you go. Allows me to, for example, disable SIP.
Where did I get the boot image? Good question – it was a while ago, but probably from this https://www.geekrar.com/get-into-recovery-mode-macos-virtual-machine/
I ran into an error when I tried to install macOS 11 “Unable to create the installation medium”, any thoughts ?
Hello Yasser, yes if you are using Beta 9. I posted this in the VMware forum. You will need to install beta 6 then update to beta 9. Or install catalina first then upgrade it to beta 9.
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/643648
If you’re booted normally and want to reboot into macOS Recovery, you can save some time by just running:
sudo nvram "recovery-boot-mode=unused" && sudo rebootGreat Tip Miles!!!
I’ve added it to the article. I should have known, It’s not like I wrote an article on it LOL
https://mrmacintosh.com/boot-to-internet-recovery-recovery-partition-or-diagnostics-from-macos/
Clearing the cache worked for me. Others needed to clear cookies. So try that if you run into problems with their site.
A million thanks for the heads up! Now I can run 32-bit apps on Mojave and still use Catalina.
More than happy about this.
I utilized the new Fusion Player 12 to import an existing Windows 10 virtual machine that I use via Virtual Box. No problem at all. Runs fine on macOS 10.15.7 iMac 2017.
This is really nice news! Thanks for the heads up.
That said, at the moment, when you try to register, all you get is
“Content Not Available
Dear user, the web content you have requested is not available.”
Hopefully that will clear up soon.
BTW, any chance of being able to get v11.5 for free for those still stuck on macOS 10.14 Mojave?
So it turns out that you can only downgrade to get earlier versions like 11.5 if you buy a paid license. The free license apparently is not eligible.
(just re-posting my previous comment in the right context in this thread)
Clearing the cache worked for me. Others needed to clear cookies. So try that if you run into problems with their site.