Sections

Highlights

  • QEMU backend updated to v7.2.0. Also updated usbredir (0.13.0), virglrenderer (latest commit), ANGLE (latest commit)
  • Improved renderer backend. Lots of bug fixes and stability improvements to GPU accelerated Linux VMs (most common crashes when GPU acceleration is enabled should be gone now). New option to change the renderer backend to ANGLE Metal and limit FPS (in Preferences). Switching to Metal is highly recommended.
  • iOS TrollStore build (UTM.HV.ipa) now supports JIT. Additionally, there is now in-app settings.
  • iOS TrollStore build now supports TSO (Total Store Ordering). TSO is used by Rosetta on the Mac to improve x86_64 emulation on ARM64. It can now be used on M1 iPads with QEMU to improve performance of FEX-Emu or a patched Rosetta. Note that it is recommended that TSO be disabled if you do not need to emulate x86_64 because it can reduce performance of other tasks.
  • macOS AppleScript (OSA) support and CLI interface. You can control parts of UTM through the OSA interface. Currently there is support for listing VMs as well as start/stop/suspend operations and the ability to print out the guest serial port connections. More functionality will be added in the future. A command line application is also provided in UTM.app/Contents/MacOS/utmctl (which you can symlink to /usr/local/bin/utmctl if desired) that can be used for automation tasks without needing to learn AppleScript.
  • macOS 13+ Menu bar extra. You can enable the menu bar extra icon in Preferences (Cmd+,) as well as disable the dock icon. The menu bar extra provides a minimal interface to start/stop/suspend VMs and is useful when paired with headless VMs (a VM that does not have any display or terminal console installed).

Notes

  • Newly created Linux VMs will now use virtio-gpu-gl-pci by default. It is recommended that you change the display card of existing QEMU backend Linux VMs to this card in order to take advantage of the improved renderer backend. This should result in improved performance in GUI rendering. Note that some applications (particularly 3D applications) may lock up or crash UTM and if you are experiencing issues, you can go back to virtio-ramfb or virtio-vga.
  • Newly created Windows VMs will now use virtio-ramfb-gl (Apple Silicon) or virtio-vga-gl (Intel) by default. There is NO 3D acceleration drivers for Windows yet, so unlike Linux, this will not improve any compatibility with applications. However, the GL backend can still be beneficial to Windows users because it has smoother animations and less tearing and artifacts. The overall benefits will not be as pronounced as for Linux VMs so it is optional that you change existing VMs to a -gl display card.
  • iOS It is recommended that you switch to the Metal backend in Preferences for better performance. However, some applications such as glxgears will not work with the Metal backend.

Changelog

The full list of changes can be found on GitHub.