You may also have to download a few updates if they are available which can take a while. You’ll also be prompted to allow VMware to access your Mac’s Accessibility Settings which is perfectly safe to do and you can revoke this at any time. You can then download and install the free version of VMware Fusion Player on your Intel or Apple Silicon Mac which is about 700MB in size.ĭuring the installation process, you’ll have to enter the license key that’s provided with your free VMware Customer Connect account. You’ll be sent an activation code to your email address to activate your account. To get started with VMware Fusion you’ll first need to sign-up for a VMware Customer Connect account. This compares to Parallels which is $99.99 per year which includes all future updates or there’s a one time purchase version for $129.99 but this doesn’t include updates and may eventually stop working with future releases of macOS. VMware Fusion Player for commercial use is $149/£127.99 and for IT managers or System Admins, there’s also VMware Fusion Pro for $199/£169.16. The basic version of VMware Fusion is free for non commercial use. VMware Fusion has also been slow to update to work on the latest versions of macOS and especially for compatibility with Apple Silicon Macs from 2020 onwards, whereas Parallels was years ahead of it. Parallels is by far the slicker, faster and all-round better VM of the two but it does cost $99.99 (£99.99) per year (or $129.99/£129.99 as a one off purchase) whereas VMware Fusion is free for non commercial use. This allows you to switch between Windows and macOS at any point.įor Mac users, there are basically two big players in the virtual machine market – Parallels and VMware Fusion. Like all virtual machines, VMware runs Windows and other operating systems simultaneously within macOS. VMware Fusion is a virtual machine that allows you to run Windows on a Mac and also other operating systems such as Linux.

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