If you are looking for a simple and reliable virtual machine that can run natively on Apple Silicon (M1/M2 …), and is also available for free (as of April 2023), check out UTM at https://mac.getutm.app/ .

For some reason, Virtualbox does not work reliably on Mac anymore, and my search led me to UTM app. It’s based on QEMU, an open source virtualisation platform available since long, providing a very convenient GUI to access the underlying VM software.

UTM is a simple and reliable virtual machine that run natively on Apple Silicon (M1/M2 …) chips, is available for free . Check out the UTM app at https://mac.getutm.app .

One drawback that it still has is the unavailability of snapshots, which in my view is very helpful in reverting back to a known/safe state. Though there is some work going on as per https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/issues/2688