For those who have been waiting for my macOS virtualisation apps to support bridged networking, that wait is over. Following Apple’s swift approval for me to use the restricted entitlement that’s required for this, I’m delighted to release new versions of Viable, Vimy and ViableS with that support at last.

Your choice

In Viable and ViableS, you now have a popup menu offering you a choice of network types. Typically those should include Ethernet, perhaps through an adaptor, Wi-Fi, NAT and none. The first two work by bridging, while NAT uses address translation as before.

When you opt for a bridged network connection, the VM appears on your network like another Mac, with its own IP address possibly assigned using DHCP from your router. That IP and that of the host Mac are bridged together through the single network port of your Mac. When that network port is being used lightly by the host, your VM will be given close to the full speed of that port, so performance can be considerably better. As the VM has its own IP address on your network, it’s more flexible and useful, and should cope better with more sophisticated network configurations.

NAT is normally fine for basic use, but doesn’t give your VM its own IP address, and can’t benefit from full speed.

My apps manage networks through Apple’s virtualisation API, which tells them which networks are available for bridging. When you open Viable or ViableS, the app gets that list, and uses it to build a popup menu for you to choose which to use. That will typically include both Ethernet and Wi-Fi, to which the app adds the option to use NAT networking, and to have no network connection at all.

During testing here, Ethernet has proved a good and reliable choice, and you can then use Network settings in the VM to configure a fixed IP address or whatever else you need. Wi-Fi is different, and I haven’t had any success connecting a macOS VM through Wi-Fi. What happens instead is that, after a minute or two, that VM is given a bridged Ethernet connection. This is a slower process, as if it’s a fallback when a Wi-Fi connection couldn’t be negotiated. I therefore recommend that, if you want to use a bridged network connection, you use an Ethernet option in this popup menu. If necessary, a little experimentation may be worthwhile.

Network type and settings

Running a VM on the same Mac shouldn’t present a problem for saved settings in the VM. Where this becomes more complicated is when you save a VM with its settings on an external disk, and move that to another Mac to run the same VM. Viable records the network type using an integer, which for bridged networking is the index of that network type in the list of those available. If that list always starts with bridged Ethernet, and you have set that for the VM, as network type 0, that VM will get that network reliably.

NAT networking is coded as type 65, regardless of that Mac’s networking options, and no network connection is 66.

This can become more complicated and less consistent with Macs that offer more than Ethernet and Wi-Fi for bridging. In those cases, you may find it helpful to override saved settings to ensure a VM gets the right type of network connection, when running on a different Mac. One thing’s certain, though: with sufficient slots to accommodate 65 different types of bridged network, this should cater for even the most complex of networks.

Improved info

Both Viable and ViableS now give more and better information in the app’s main window, when they start a VM up. That includes the network type code, for example:
Asking for VM at /Volumes/OWCenvoyPro4tb/sonoma/sonomab7.vimi/ with 4 vCPUs 16 GB Memory, display dimensions 1600 × 1000 at 254 ppi HiDPI 1.
Bridged network type 0 at MAC address d6:7:58:8:78:d4
Shared folders enabled.

Downloads

Viable 1.0.11 (beta 11), the full macOS VM utility, is now available from here: viable1b11

ViableS 1.0.11 (beta 11), the fully sandboxed and isolated version ideal for research, is now available from here: viables1b11

Vimy 0.6 (third beta), for simply running built macOS VMs, is now available from here: vimy06

Each is also available from Downloads above, and from their Product Page.