macOS
Sections
To access UTM preferences, either press ⌘+, or from the menu bar, select UTM → Settings….
Application
Keep UTM Running…
If enabled, when every window is closed and there are no headless VMs running, UTM will quit as well.
macOS 13+ Show dock icon
If disabled, on next launch, the dock icon will be hidden. This is useful for headless mode. If this option is disabled, the menu bar icon must be shown and UTM will keep running even if all windows are closed.
macOS 13+ Show menu bar icon
If enabled, a menu bar extra for UTM will be displayed. This allows you to quickly start and stop a VM as well as quit UTM.
Prevent system from sleeping…
If enabled, system idle sleep will be disabled when any VM is running (including headless ones).
Do not show confirmation when closing…
UTM will warn you when you attempt to close a window of a running VM or when you attempt to quit the application while there are still running VMs. Not properly shutting down a guest could result in data loss. This option will disable the prompt.
Display
VM display size is fixed
If enabled, do not allow resizing of the VM window. If disabled, resizing the VM window will zoom/scale the content if SPICE guest tools are not installed or the VM uses Apple backend. If SPICE guest tools are installed and the VM uses the QEMU backend and this option is disabled, the guest will attempt to change resolution to match the window size.
Do not save VM screenshot…
For privacy reasons, you may not want UTM to automatically capture a screenshot every 30 seconds and store it in the .utm package. Note that existing screenshots will not be deleted until the next time the VM is started.
Renderer Backend
When a QEMU backend VM supports GPU acceleration, one of a number of renderer backends can be selected. There are certain applications that only work (or performs better) with a specific backend. If you are unsure, leave it to default.
FPS Limit
By default, the operating system will synchronize the rendering of each frame to the refresh rate of the current display. However, there are cases where performance intensive applications may cause frame stalls and result in inconsistent frame times. You can use this option to lower the target frame rate in order to have a more consistent experience.
Sound
Sound Backend
This allows you to specify the audio backend for QEMU VMs. The default will select the best available backend. If the selected backend is not available for any reason, it will fallback to another option. CoreAudio has lower latency but does not support audio input (microphone).
Input
Option is Meta key
When using the built-in console, the Option key can be used as the Meta key. This means that the Esc key is set before the character that was pressed. This is useful for applications like Emacs which makes use of the Meta key. The downside is that international text entry is also handled by the Option key and so enabling this breaks that. You can toggle this option (per-window) while using the console with the key shortcut Command+Option+O.
Hold Control for right click
This is in addition to the usual way of generating a right click which is based on the system preference for a secondary click.
Use Command+Option for input capture/release
The default combination is Control+Option which can be used to capture/release the mouse when inside a VM window. That button combination collides with the VoiceOver’s hot key.
Caps Lock treated as a key
By default, Caps Lock is treated as a modifier state which is synchronized with the guest. However, some users (for example users of screen reader software) may find it useful to treat Caps Lock as a raw key. If enabled, the Caps Lock state may go out of sync with the host.
Num Lock is forced on
For keyboards which do not have a num lock button, this will ensure the guest always treat the numeric pad as number keys. Since macOS does not support num lock, we do not attempt to synchronize the host num lock state (and keyboard LED) so this may result in the guest and host having the num lock state out of sync.
Invert scrolling
Scroll wheel and gestures are translated to mouse wheel events sent to the guest. If this option is enabled, the polarity of the event is inverted.
USB
Do not prompt…
When a new USB device is plugged in, the currently active VM will ask the user if they wish to connect the device to the VM. This option will disable that prompt.