I was happiest with xhyve https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
Serial console in terminal was nice (for me!), network configuration was trash (I think I was able to set the subnet by fiddling around with system plists? and it would revert from time to time), and I didn't have to deal with Virtualbox. I've been away from macs for a while, I don't know if xhyve works on the M1, but it might. I ran a FreeBSD vm so I could run my server code on my laptop in an environment that was like production but slower.
In Favourite hypervisor for a macOS host?machyve
xhyve
C2015–2022
machyve / xhyve
xhyve
xhyve, a lightweight OS X virtualization solution
33Distinct people
35Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
6.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
xhyve, a lightweight OS X virtualization solution
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- coreos/coreos-xhyve · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year35 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-06-10 18:53:20 UTC to 2022-04-01 05:44:25 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 4 | 3 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 0 | 14 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
xhyve.xyz
About
The xhyve hypervisor is a port of bhyve to macOS. It is built on top of Hypervisor.framework in OS X 10.10 Yosemite and higher, runs entirely in userspace, and has no other dependencies. It can run FreeBSD, some Linux distributions, and Windows 10 and may gain support for other guest operating systems in the future.
License: BSD-2-Clause
Introduction: http://www.pagetable.com/?p=831
Requirements
OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite or later
a 2010 or later Mac (i.e. a CPU that supports EPT: sysctl kern.hv_support = 1)
Installation
If you have homebrew, then simply:
$ brew update
$ brew install --HEAD xhyve
The --HEAD in the brew command ensures that you always get the latest changes, even if the homebrew database is not yet updated. If for any reason you don't want that simply do brew install xhyve .
If you have MacPorts, then simply:
$ sudo port selfupdate
$ sudo port install xhyve
MacPorts is up to date with the GitHub ref listed in the port info
$ port info xhyve
xhyve @20170117 (emulators)
...
Otherwise:
Building
$ git clone https://github.com/machyve/xhyve.git
$ cd xhyve
$ xcodebuild
The resulting binary will be in build/Release/xhyve
Usage
$ xhyve -h
See below for steps to boot various OSs
What is bhyve?
bhyve is the FreeBSD hypervisor, roughly analogous to KVM + QEMU on Linux. It has a focus on simplicity.
It exposes the following peripherals to virtual machines:
Local x(2)APIC
IO-APIC
8259A PIC
8253/8254 PIT
HPET
PM Timer
RTC
PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse (via VNC)
PCI
host bridge
passthrough
UART
AHCI (i.e. HDD and CD)
VirtIO block device
VirtIO networking
VirtIO RNG
Intel e1000 (aka e82545)
VGA/Framebuffer (exposed with a minimal VNC server)
XHCI USB support with one device defined - a tablet for Windows guest support
bhyve architecture
Linux
I/O VM control FreeBSD NetBSD
OpenBSD
| A | A | |
V | V | V V
+-------------++-------------++-------------++-------------+
| || || || |
| bhyve || bhyvectl || bhyveload || grub2-bhyve |
| || || || |
| || || || |
+-------------++-------------++-------------++-------------+
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| libvmmapi |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
A
| user
------------------------------┼------------------------------
| ioctl FreeBSD kernel
V
+----------------------------+
| VMX/SVM host |
| VMX/SVM guest |
| VMX/SVM nested paging |
| Timers |
| Interrupts |
+----------------------------+
vmm.ko
vmm.ko
The bhyve FreeBSD kernel module. Manages VM and vCPU objects, the guest physical address space and handles guest interaction with PIC, PIT, HPET, PM Timer, x(2)APIC and I/O-APIC. Contains a minimal x86 emulator to decode guest MMIO. Executes the two innermost vCPU runloops (VMX/SVM and interrupts/timers/paging). Has backends for Intel VMX and AMD SVM. Provides an ioctl and mmap API to userspace.
libvmmapi
Thin abstraction layer between the vmm.ko ioctl interface and the userspace C API.
bhyve
The userspace bhyve component (kind of a very light-weight QEMU) that executes virtual machines. Runs the guest I/O vCPU runloops. Manages ACPI, PCI and all non in-kernel devices. Interacts with vmm.ko through libvmmapi.
bhyvectl
Somewhat superfluous utility to introspect and manage the life cycle of virtual machines. Virtual machines and vCPUs can exist as kernel objects independently of a bhyve host process. Typically used to delete VM objects after use. Odd architectural choice.
bhyveload
Userspace port of the FreeBSD bootloader. This is a cumbersome workaround to bootstrap a FreeBSD guest operating system without using firmware. It creates a VM object, loads the FreeBSD kernel into guest memory, sets up the initial vCPU state and then exits. Only then a VM can be executed by bhyve.
grub2-bhyve
Performs the same function as bhyveload but is a userspace port of GRUB2. It is used to bootstrap guest operating systems other than FreeBSD, i.e. Linux, OpenBSD and NetBSD.
xhyve architecture
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| xhyve |
| |
| I/O |
| |
| |
| |
|+--------------------------------------------------------+|
|| vmm VMX guest ||
|| Timers ||
|| Interrupts ||
|+--------------------------------------------------------+|
+----------------------------------------------------------+
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| Hypervisor.framework |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
A
| user
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
35 sources> I would be delighted if Apple supported an M1 version of VirtualBox.
They almost do, Apple ships Hypervisor.framework with macOS. You still need an app to interface with it, but Apple’s framework does most of the work.
You might be interested in https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
Asahi Linux, of course, isn’t that. Asahi Linux runs on bare metal.
In Asahi Linux alpha releaseThe xhyve fork/port of bhyve for MacOS is worth mentioning: https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
In QEMU 6.2I'm not sure you'll get the features of Virtualbox if needing GUI but there is Hypervisor.framework[1]
based upon xhyve[2]. It's what powers Docker Desktop on Mac.
You can build linux images with linux kit[3]
[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/hypervisor
[2] https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
[3] https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit
In Linux, macOS, and Windows running simultaneously on a first gen Core i5xhyve[0] doesn't look entirely production ready, but emulates a number of devices including networking, block storage, and a framebuffer while being based on Hypervisor.framework.
[0] https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
In Ubuntu successfully virtualized on M1"Because NVIDIA" is blatantly false.
CUDA support for docker containers is provided through the open source Nvidia-Docker project maintained by Nvidia[1]. If anything this is a great argument for NVIDIAs usage of open source.
Searching that project's issues shows that Nvidia-Docker support on MacOS is blocked by the VM used by Docker for Mac(xhyve) not supporting PCI passthrough, which is required for any containers to use host GPU resources.[2]
xhyve has an issue for PCI passthrough, updated a few months ago, which notes that the APIs provided by Apple through DriverKit are insufficient for this use case[3]
So your comment should really say "Because Apple"
[1] https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker
[2] https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker/issues/101#issuecomm...
[3] https://github.com/machyve/xhyve/issues/108#issuecomment-616...
In Nvidia to Acquire Arm for $40BHave look at xhyve https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
Was pretty performant for me compared to other tools.
*Not on Mac anymore, switched to Linux few years back.
In Ask HN: What's the nicest desktop virtualisation software for macOS?The Hypervisor framework was released in Yosemite (macOS 10.10). Nice overview of it here <https://www.pagetable.com/?p=764>. There is a (basic) but free implementation xhyve.xyz <https://github.com/machyve/xhyve> which can be used to run various hosts. I know several folks that run Linux so they can use various FPGA development tools to remotely display X windows on the Mac using XQuartz.
In macOS Kernel Extensions are officially deprecatedNot really*, see xhyve.
https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
Meaning, it’s not a heavy Virtualbox or Vmware type VM, no ‘vagrant up’ needed.
Instead:
https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/reference/drivers/hyperkit...
In My 2020 Hackintosh Hardware SpecThe equivalent on macOS would leverage Hypervisor.framework, like xhyve or Veertu.
https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
https://veertu.com/anka-technology/#hypervisor
In VirtualBox 6.0 releasedI hope xhyve will become a first class supported feature that gets shipped with macOS. I see recent commits from Apple engineers https://github.com/machyve/xhyve
In Running FreeBSD on OS X using xhyve, a port of bhyvethe xhyve repo came with a small Linux setup
time (git clone github.com/mist64/xhyve.git; cd xhyve; make; ./xhyverun.sh) w/ "sudo halt" pasted into the resulting shell: 14.85s
In Running FreeBSD on OS X using xhyve, a port of bhyvehttp://ilostmynotes.blogspot.com/2014/11/thunderbolt-dma-att...
Apple in MacOS is using IOMMU to protect against Firewire/Thunderbolt attacks.
Here's a developer working on xhyve that is explaining how each PCI device has it's own VT-d mapper/domain: https://github.com/mist64/xhyve/issues/108#issuecomment-3592...
In Thunderbolt 3 UnblockerXhyve: Run Linux and FreeBSD in MacOS
2 points · Open discussionNo, but there is a port of bhyve using the MacOS hypervisor.framework
https://github.com/mist64/xhyve
In FreeBSD on a MacBook ProShowing the 15 most recent of 35 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.