Installing Multipass on macOS

Prerequisites

Hypervisor.framework / hyperkit

The default backend on macOS is hyperkit, wrapping Apple’s Hypervisor.framework. You need macOS Yosemite, version 10.10.3 or later installed on a 2010 or newer Mac.

VirtualBox

Multipass also supports using VirtualBox as a virtualization provider. You can download the latest version and check the requirements on the VirtualBox website.

If you’d like to use VirtualBox, run the following in the terminal after installing Multipass:

$ sudo multipass set local.driver=virtualbox

Installation

To install Multipass on macOS, you have two options: the installer package or brew:

Installer

Download the latest installer from our GitHub releases page - it’s the .pkg package.

If you want Tab completion on the command line, install bash-completion from brew first.

Activate the downloaded installer and it will guide you through the steps necessary. You will need an account with Administrator privileges to complete the installation.

There’s a script to uninstall:

$ sudo sh "/Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass/uninstall.sh"

Brew

Have a look at brew.sh on instructions to install Brew itself. Then, it’s a simple:

$ brew install --cask multipass

To uninstall:

$ brew uninstall multipass
# or
$ brew uninstall --zap multipass # to destroy all data, too

First run

Once installed, open the Terminal app and you can use multipass launch to create your first instance.

With multipass version you can check which version you have running:

$ multipass version
multipass 1.0.0+mac
multipassd 1.0.0+mac

Have a look at Working with instances to quickly get off the ground!

Last updated 9 months ago.