On the face of it, virtualisation sounds too good to be true: it enables you to run completely different operating systems, from Windows and Linux to older versions of OS X, in a window within macOS.
Sadly, in some ways it is. While Windows in a virtual machine (VM) may let you run apps and play games that aren’t available on the Mac, there’s a price to pay in terms of performance.
You can never tap into the full potential of your Mac’s hardware, but you can maximise what resources are available to deliver speeds akin to starting up your Mac in one of these operating systems instead of macOS.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to tweak your VMs, whether you’re running VMWare Fusion, Parallels Desktop or VirtualBox, to get the best level of performance possible.
Basic principles
The trick to optimising VM performance is to first understand your limits. You can’t simply assign every last bit of your Mac’s hardware to running it at full tilt; you need to reserve enough system resources to allow macOS to run efficiently in the background.
For macOS Sierra, that means holding back at least 2GB of memory and one processor core (ideally two, if your Mac has a quad-core CPU).
You should also look to store your VM’s virtual hard disk file on the fastest drive you can spare. This is typically the internal drive, though an external SSD on a Thunderbolt or USB 3 connection will perform well, too.
Consult your virtualisation tool’s instructions for moving a VM to a new drive if necessary; in Parallels and VMWare, shut down the VM, close the app, then move the file.
Restart the VM and the app will complain it can’t find the disk – just point it to the new location. Also, if you’re in the process of creating your VM from scratch you can tweak a bit more performance out of it by allocating all the storage space you want to make available to it when you create the VM – virtualisation tools’ option of dynamically expanding drives saves on space, but these slow things down.
Get optimising
Let’s get started. Open your virtualisation tool and make sure it’s fully up to date – all three of the virtualisation tools we’ve mentioned are frequently updated to fix bugs and improve overall performance.
Next, make sure you install the dedicated hardware drivers for your VM’s operating system, if you haven’t already – that means installing Parallels Tools, VMWare Tools or VirtualBox Additions (If you use VirtualBox, you should also download and install the VirtualBox Extension Pack from its website to add USB 2.0 and USB 3 support).
This will also help maximise performance. Next, follow the walkthrough opposite to optimise your VM, test its performance and then tweak further if necessary. It’s written for Parallels Desktop, but much of it you can adapt to VirtualBox or VMWare.
Look out for platform-specific tweaks, though. For VMWare, go to the troubleshooting forum, where you’ll find a wealth of things to try if a VM isn’t performing as you expect; still, many of the tips there will, once again, apply to VirtualBox and Parallels as well.
1. Overall VM tweaks
With your VM shut down, Ctrl-click it and pick Configure. Under Options, select Optimization. Set Performance to ‘Faster virtual machine’, ‘Resource usage’ to ‘No limit’, and enable Adaptive Hypervisor and ‘Tune Windows for speed’.
2. Allocate processing
In the Hardware tab, select CPU & Memory. If your Mac has a quad-core processor, assign two processors to the VM.
Set memory within the marked recommended limits – you’ll only need 4GB for gaming, design and media.
3. Graphics memory
Select 'Graphics' and allocate 512MB to video memory if you have multiple or Retina displays.
For gaming, you could go up to 2GB to facilitate higher resolution textures, but remember to leave enough memory for macOS to run smoothly.
4. Disk optimisation
Select Hard Disk 1 and make sure ‘Real time virtual disk optimization’ is not enabled.
Repeat this for any other disks attached to the VM. In Parallels Desktop 10 or 11, you will find this setting in Options > Optimization.
5. Final hardware tweaks
If you plan to connect USB devices, go to USB & Bluetooth, expand Advanced Settings and then enable USB 3.0.
Next, Choose Parallels Desktop > Preferences, click the Advanced tab and make sure ‘Use detailed log messages’ is disabled.
6. Minimise resource use
If you’re planning to use your VM for something demanding, like playing a full-screen game, close any unnecessary background services in macOS via their menu bar icons, and temporarily switch off Time Machine in System Preferences.
7. Monitor performance
Start up your VM. If you find its performance isn’t up to scratch, Ctrl-click Windows’ Taskbar and pick Task Manager.
Click More Details to monitor which apps and processes are using the most of the system resources you’ve given to the VM.
8. Streamline demands
Click the CPU or Memory tab to sort the task list on that attribute and identify any resource hogs; for those not needed for what you’re doing, close the parent program or Ctrl-click the process and pick ‘End task’ to see if performance improves
9. Tweak VM settings
If things are still underperforming and your Mac can afford to spare more resources, shut down the VM, Ctrl-click it in the list of VMs, then choose Configure.
Repeat steps 1 to 4 to assign additional resources, but leaving plenty for macOS.
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