You Can Try MacOS 26 Tahoe (for Free) Without Risking Your Current Device
Want to try macOS 26 but don’t want to use a buggy preview of the operating system as your daily driver? You can set it up in a virtual machine instead. This will give you a feel for the upcoming operating system without messing up your computer.
We’ve talked about how to set up Tahoe , but that guide replaces your current operating system. That’s fine if you have a second machine specifically for testing, or if you’re willing to live with a lot of uncertainty and potential data loss for some reason. The good news is that UTM offers free virtual machines on Apple Silicon Macs , and it can run macOS 26 Tahoe right now — you just need to spend a few minutes setting it up.
This guide assumes you have a Mac with an Apple Silicon chip. If you’re a Windows user or still using an Intel Mac, you’ll have to find another way to try out the Tahoe.
Download macOS 26 Tahoe
To get started, download the operating system. You’ll need to create an Apple developer account if you don’t have one – you can sign up here . Eventually, you’ll be asked to pay $99, but you don’t actually have to – just close the tab when you get to that part.
Now head to Developer.apple.com/download . You’ll see a list of operating systems available for download, including macOS 26 beta. Click the Mac computers with Apple silicon link to download the IPSW file — it’s an 18.29GB file, so make sure you have enough storage space.
You will need to download another file called Device Support for macOS 26 beta . Download this DMG, open it, and run the package installer. Setting up Tahoe in UTM will not work unless you install this, so don’t skip this step.
Set up UTM tag
Download UTM , an open-source Mac app, and install it if you haven’t already. The Mac App Store version costs $10, which supports the developers, or you can download the installer for free.
Launch UTM and click the plus icon to create a new virtual machine. Make sure you select Virtualize rather than Emulate for better performance. You will then be asked how much memory and hard disk space you want to allocate to the machine – I suggest sticking with the defaults, just make sure you have enough free disk space. Finally, you will be asked to provide an IPSW file.
Drag the file you downloaded earlier here and click Continue . This will start the installation process, which is mostly unimportant. Eventually, you will see the first setup wizard, where you set up your account, choose your language and region, and sign in to your iCloud account. You will be prompted to migrate your data, but I recommend you skip this step.
Once you complete these steps, you will be able to sign in to macOS Tahoe.
It works as if you were using a brand new Mac. I could easily move the mouse in and out of the window, and resizing the window changed the virtual machine’s resolution.
If you want to access files on your Mac from inside a virtual machine, I recommend doing so using the file sharing feature in macOS itself. I was able to connect to any shared folder on my network from the virtual machine, including files shared by the Mac it was running on.
This will be how I test Tahoe’s features from now until its official release in the fall. If you want to get a feel for Apple’s future OS without using the beta as your permanent system, I encourage you to try this.