This is a Bash script that creates a VirtualBox guest macOS virtual machine by downloading unmodified macOS installation files directly from Apple servers.
A default install only requires the user to sit patiently and, less than ten times, press enter when prompted by the script, without interacting with the virtual machine. The script doesn't install any closed-source additions or extra bootloaders. Tested on Cygwin. Works on macOS and WSL, should work on most Linux distros.
macOS Catalina 10.15.2 and 10.15.3 require VirtualBox version 6.1.4 or higher. A workaround for lower versions of VirtualBox which involves using earlier versions of boot.efi is described in issue 134.
Documentation can be viewed by executing the command ./macos-guest-virtualbox.sh documentation
iCloud, iMessage, and other connected Apple services require a valid device name and serial number, board ID and serial number, and other genuine (or genuine-like) Apple parameters. These can be set in NVRAM by editing the script. See documentation for further information.
The script by default assigns a target virtual disk storage size of 80GB, which is populated to about 20GB on the host on initial installation. After the installation is complete, the storage size may be increased. See documentation for further information.
Developing and maintaining VirtualBox or macOS features is beyond the scope of this script. Some features may behave unexpectedly, such as USB device support, audio support, FileVault boot password prompt support, and other features.
After successfully creating a working macOS virtual machine, consider importing it into QEMU/KVM so it can run with hardware passthrough at near-native performance. QEMU/KVM requires additional configuration that is beyond the scope of the script.
macOS may not support any built-in VirtualBox audio controllers. The bootloader OpenCore may be able to load open-source audio drivers in VirtualBox, providing the configuration for STAC9221 (Intel HD Audio) or SigmaTel STAC9700,83,84 (ICH AC97) is available.
The VirtualBox EFI implementation does not properly load the FileVault full disk encryption password prompt upon boot. The bootloader OpenCore is able to load the password prompt with the parameter ProvideConsoleGop set to true. See bare config.plist.
All the dependencies should be available through a package manager:
bash coreutils gzip unzip wget xxd dmg2img virtualbox
- VirtualBox≥6.1.6 with Extension Pack, though versions as low as 5.2 may work.
- GNU
Bash≥4.3, on Windows run through Cygwin or WSL. - GNU
coreutils≥8.22, GNUgzip≥1.5, Info-ZIPunzip≥v6.0, GNUwget≥1.14,xxd≥1.7 dmg2img≥1.6.5, on Cygwin the package is not available through the package manager so the script downloads it automatically.