Microsoft to officially support Windows 11 on M1 and M2 powered Macs with Parallels

Image source: Parallels.

With Apple still not supporting Boot Camp, Microsoft has announced plans to officially support Mac users who want to run Windows 11 on their M1 and M2-powered devices through Parallels Desktop 18.

In a support article, Microsoft outlined two options for Mac users wanting to run Windows 11. The first was running it through a Cloud PC configuration and using Microsoft’s Windows 365 service. These are virtual machines hosted in the cloud, and they include full application compatibility. And the second was through Parallels.

Mac users intending to do so should note that there are limitations as not all Windows functions are supported. As the support article states:

The Arm version of Windows 11 has limitations that can impact your ability to use various types of hardware, games, and apps, including those that rely on DirectX 12 or OpenGL3.3 or greater. Experiences that depend on an additional layer of virtualisation (nested virtualisation) are not supported.

This also includes:

Windows Subsystem for Android: enables your Windows 11 device to run Android applications that are available in the Amazon Appstore
Windows Subsystem for Linux: enables a GNU/Linux environment on Windows 11
Windows Sandbox: a lightweight desktop environment to safely run applications in isolation
Virtualisation-based Security (VBS): enables customers to create and isolate a secure region of memory from the normal operating system

The support article from Microsoft doesn’t lay out how a user can actually buy a copy of Windows 11 to install and activate, but users who are interested can buy and download a copy of Windows 11 Pro here.