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VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for both business and home use. VirtualBox is not only an extremely feature-rich, high-performance product for business customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Can I run macOS on a Windows machine?

Yes. VirtualBox lets you install multiple operating systems on a single PC and seamlessly switch between them, including macOS on Intel hardware (experimental feature). VirtualBox can run multiple x86 OS such as Windows, macOS, Linux distributions, FreeBSD and OpenBSD on your host machine. The operating systems run in an application, which virtualizes the hardware in a completely isolated environment.

Is VirtualBox free?

Yes, VirtualBox is a free and open source virtual machine platform for personal, educational or evaluation use.

Do I need to dual boot or repartition the disk?

No, it is not necessary. VirtualBox uses your computer’s file system and creates files that map to a virtual machine’s disk drives, so there is no need to create a partition for each operating system. If you already have another dual-boot operating system, you can use VirtualBox to run the other operating system in a virtual machine on the host operating system. Instead of dual booting, you can run both operating systems at the same time and seamlessly switch from one operating system to another with the click of a mouse.

Can I run an x86 virtual machine on Arm hardware?

Unfortunately not. You cannot run an x86 image on Arm via VirtualBox. Virtual Box will only allow you to run virtual machines on the same underlying architecture that your host machine supports.

Characteristics

Modularity.

VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from multiple interfaces simultaneously: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a complete software development kit: even though it’s open source software, you don’t need to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

Virtual machine descriptions in XML.

The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored exclusively in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore be easily ported to other computers.

Guest add-on for Windows, Linux and Solaris.

VirtualBox has special software that can be installed in Windows, Linux and Solaris virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features offered by these guest plugins are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen resolutions (eg by resizing the guest window). There is also a guest add-on for OS/2 with somewhat reduced functionality.

Shared folders.

Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows declaring certain host directories as “shared folders”, which can then be accessed from virtual machines.

VirtualBox is actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever-growing list of features, supported guest operating systems, and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort supported by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Oracle ensures that the product always meets professional quality criteria.

What is new

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: Added nested paging support for nested virtualization (Intel hosts only)
• VMM: Fixed rare guru meditations with certain guests on macOS 10.15 (Catalina) (bug #21237)
• VMM: Fixed possible VM process crash on Windows hosts when Hyper-V is used with certain guests (bug #21174)
• VMM: Fixed Windows XP guest hang or BSOD on AMD CPUs under certain circumstances (bug #21256)
• GUI: Various bug fixes for the guest control file manager
• GUI: Added more informative file operations to the guest control file manager
• GUI: Added an option to the global settings (display page) to change the UI font size
• GUI: Fixed a regression in the new vm wizard. Selected virtual disks are no longer deleted when the wizard is canceled (bug #21244)
• GUI: Added a new menu item to the device menu to optionally upgrade the guest addons.
• VirtioSCSI: Fixed recognition of the virtio SCSI controller by the EFI firmware (bug #21200)
• VirtioSCSI: Fixed hanging when shutting down VM if virtio SCSI controller is used (bug #21144)
• virtio-net: Fix a bug in the virtio-net driver included in FreeBSD version up to 12.3 that makes the device non-functional (bug #21201)
• Storage: Fixed I/O error with VirtioSCSI controller when host I/O buffer is enabled (bug #19717)
• VBoxManage: Fixed regression when ‘createmedium disk –variant RawDisk’ command resulted in invalid .vmdk file (bug #21125)
• Main: Restored input pointing device behavior in multi-monitor VM configuration (bug #21137)
• Main: Fixed progress indication during automatic installation of Linux Guest Additions
• Guest control: fixed path handling issues (bug #21095)
• 3D: Fixed VM process crash on macOS with 3D enabled (bug #21232)
• Linux host and guest: General improvements to startup scripts
• Linux Guest Additions: Introduced initial support for RHEL 8.7 and 9.2 kernels (bug #21272, #21258)
• Linux Guest Additions: Introduced initial support for SLES 15.4 kernels
• Linux Guest Additions: Fixed kernel modules rebuild behavior on shutdown