CrossOver works great if the software you’re looking to use on M1 Macs runs without any problems. Meanwhile, QEMU is free, but you need to have an understanding of how emulation works to create virtual disks and configure specific hardware. The CodeWeavers team managed to run Windows on Mac M1 on the latest version of software that emulates Intel chip code on macOS through the technology Rosette 2. While Parallels Desktop seems like the most user-friendly option, it is a paid subscription. When you need to switch between two operating systems, you need a solution that is effective and works seamlessly. When Apple once again switched to its own ARM-based M chips a few years ago, that option disappeared. You can install QEMU with the Homebrew package manager by installing a package called “qemu”. When Apple switched from its proprietary PowerPC hardware to Intel-based Macs in 2005, one of the biggest advantages was that Macs could run Windows natively, either as a primary operating system or dual-booting via BootCamp. All you have to do is to create a virtual machine with an ARM processor type. Since QEMU is an emulator, you can run Windows on Mac M1. The 3rd party links are outside the scope of this forum. You would not be able to find ARM ISOs for stable channel officially. The ISOs are intended for Qualcomm CPUs and that too, only for evaluation purposes. The difference between QEMU and Parallels Desktop is while QEMU is a machine emulator, Parallels Desktop allows seamless functioning of Windows and macOS apps by giving users more control and options. Microsoft Windows does not support M1 Mac devices. QEMU also enables emulation for user-level processes to allow applications compiled for one architecture to run on another.

It can be used with Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to run virtual machines at close to native speeds.

QEMU uses dynamic binary translation to emulate the machine’s processor to run various operating systems. All cores on the M1 line so far share memory so GPU and CPU don’t have to shuffle data to different systems. That won’t stop people from trying, though. You will want an Intel Mac if performance emulating X86 well enough to run windows (or macOS) virtually is your deciding factor. QEMU is a free open-source emulator and virtual machine software. None of the M1 are suitable for X86 workloads.

Run windows programs on mac m1