You can use the recovery partition on your Mac to create virtual machines running macOS.

Prerequisites

  • You must have a recovery partition on your Mac to create this kind of virtual machine.

  • You must have Mac OS X 10.11 or later.

Procedure

  1. Select File > New.

    A dialog box appears with the Select the Installation Method panel showing.

  2. Click Install macOS from the recovery partition.
  3. Select a recovery partition and click Continue.

    If you have more than one recovery partition, a list of partitions is presented from which to choose.

  4. Provide information about the virtual machine.
    1. In the Where text box, indicate the folder in which to save the virtual machine.

      The default location is your user/Documents/Virtual Machines folder. You do not need to save the virtual machine on the same disk as the recovery partition.

    2. To enable the virtual machine to be shared with other users on the Mac host, save the virtual machine to the Shared folder and select the Share this virtual machine with other users on this Mac check box.
    3. Click Save.
  5. In the Finish panel, you can use default settings or customize the settings before powering on the virtual machine to start the operating system installation.

    Option

    Action

    To create the virtual machine according to the specifications listed in the Finish panel

    • Click Finish.

    To change disk size or other standard settings of the virtual machine

    1. Click Customize Settings.

    2. Make changes to the virtual machine’s disk size, processor usage, removable devices, and other configurations on the Settings window.