Windows 11 is now officially supported on M3 Macs

Boot Camp, Apple's official tool for running Windows on Macs, fell victim to the Apple Silicon. However, there is no shortage of virtualization software for ARM-powered Macs, and Microsoft has blessed one such program for officially running Windows 11 on Apple computers with the M3 processor family.

According to a support document published by Microsoft, Mac users have two options if they want to run Windows on their machines, assuming buying a computer designed for Windows 11 (sacrilege, we know) is not an option: Windows 365 or Parallels Desktop.

Microsoft says Parallels Desktop versions 18 and 19 are officially authorized for running Windows 11 for ARM and Windows 11 Enterprise on Macs powered by the Apple M1, M2, and M3 processor families. The operating system can run inside a virtual machine, giving the customer access to most of its features, including multimedia technologies, hardware acceleration, DirectX 12, and more.

At the same time, some features are not available in Parallels Desktop, mostly due to the missing nested virtualization support. As such, you cannot use Windows Subsystem for Android, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Windows Sandbox (a special feature that lets you run isolated apps without risking your main installation), and Virtualization-based Security, which is also known as VBS. If you need one of those features, consider Windows 365 or purchasing a separate device made for running Windows 11 natively.

Finally, Parallels Desktop for Mac cannot run 32-bit Windows apps made for ARM (Microsoft deprecated 32-bit UWP apps for ARM in January 2023). Apple ditched 32-bit app support long ago, and there is nothing you can do to bring it back on modern macOS versions.

Parallels Desktop 19 for Mac costs $99.99/year for the standard edition or $119.99 for Pro. Right now, you can get the latter with a 25% discount on Amazon.

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