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

Prerequisites

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

  • You must have Mac OS X 10.9 or later.

Procedure

  1. Select File > New.

    The Create a New Virtual Machine assistant starts.

  2. Click More options > Install OS X 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.

  4. In the Finish panel, you can use default settings to finish the virtual machine creation, or you can customize the settings before the creation is finished.

    Option

    Action

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

    1. Click Finish.

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

    3. To enable the virtual machine to be shared with other users on the Mac host, save the virtual machine to the Shared folder. Deselect the Share this virtual machine with other users on this Mac check box if you want to save to the Shared folder but not share the virtual machine with other users on the Mac host.

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

    1. Click Customize Settings.

    2. Save the new virtual machine. You do not need to save the virtual machine on the same disk as the recovery partition.

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