Installing Haiku OS on a MacBook Pro

July 27, 2026 · Haiku OS

Back in the ’90s, I was totally enthralled with BeOS . Every now and then, I would check to see if it had come back and if we could run it somehow, but I never had much luck getting it installed. About twenty years ago, I switched to macOS, and I’ve had a different Mac over the years. For the past decade or so, I’ve had a MacBook Pro and haven’t had much luck getting it installed.

A few years ago, I saw Haiku OS as an option, but I never had much luck with that either. I’ve tried different versions and emulators to get it running, but I haven’t had anything to report.

Recently, I tried again with something called UTM, which I had been unaware of in the past. I had to coax it a little bit, but not a whole lot. I put this together to help anyone else trying to run Haiku OS on their MacBook Pro.

My real goal is to put together a few programs that I’d like to use on a daily basis and see how that works out. Just for fun, no other reason than that.

Some of the things that I was looking at building are:

• An RSS feeder
• A Gemini browser
• Maybe a Spotify player

I see that there are options for most of this stuff already in existence, but it might be fun to play with anyway.

Haiku OS on Apple Silicon (UTM Setup Guide)

These are the steps I ended up following that worked. I’ve cleaned up a bunch of the side quests that I did, so hopefully you’ll get up and running quickly.

This guide is not meant to be a one-stop shop for quickly and easily installing Haiku OS, but a good launching point for users who like to experiment and tinker with these things

Installing and optimizing the 64-bit x86 version of Haiku OS inside a UTM virtual machine on Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3) Macs, emulating x86 since Apple Silicon is ARM.

Phase 1: Prerequisites & Initial Configuration

1. Download UTM: mac.getutm.app.
2. Download Haiku: the x86_64 (64-bit) ISO image (anyboot.iso) from haiku-os.org/get-haiku.
3. Launch UTM: Create a New Virtual Machine → Emulate → Other.
4. Mount ISO: browse to and select the downloaded Haiku ISO.

Phase 2: Correcting Crucial Hardware & System Settings

To avoid a black-screen freeze or installer bottlenecks, apply before booting:

• System tab: Architecture i386 → x86_64 (required to match the 64-bit installer); Machine Q35 → Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996) (pc) (critical — avoids chipset installer panics); Memory → 2048 MB.
• Drives tab: New Drive, interface IDE or SATA, size at least 16 GB, Resize then Save.

Phase 3: Initializing and Formatting the Virtual Drive

The installer will warn no valid partitions exist — format using Haiku’s native filesystem:

1. Dismiss the unformatted-volume alert, then Set up partitions… to launch DriveSetup.
2. Select the unformatted 16 GB QEMU HARDDISK.
3. Disk → Initialize → Intel Partition Map, confirm the warning.
4. Highlight the new Empty space row, Partition → Create…, leave size at max, set type to Haiku File System (BFS), Create.
5. Highlight the new partition, Partition → Format → Be File System, name it “Haiku”, confirm.
6. Close DriveSetup; in the installer, select “Haiku” from the Onto: dropdown and click Begin.

Phase 4: First Boot & Preventing Installer Loops

Unmount the installer ISO after install finishes, or the VM loops back into setup:

1. Click the CD/DVD icon in UTM’s toolbar → Clear/Eject to detach anyboot.iso. If you keep getting your system to reboot to the installation screen, this is where the problem is.
2. Power off, then restart the VM — it now boots straight into the Haiku Desktop.

Phase 5: Display & Desktop Optimizations

• Sharp scaling: shut down the VM, Settings → Display, Scaling Mode/Filter Linear → Nearest Neighbor (prevents blurry text on resize).
• Resolution: inside Haiku, Deskbar (Feather icon) → Preferences → Screen, pick a resolution matching the display ratio (e.g. 1280x800 or 1440x900), Apply.
• Weather app as a live widget: Deskbar → Applications → HaikuDepot, search “Weather”, Install, launch it, enable Show Replicants (Deskbar → Window), then drag the tiny hand-icon handle from the Weather window’s corner onto the desktop to pin it as a replicant. You don’t have to do this, but it’s a good way to test that you can install software and hit the network and that everything is acting as it should

Phase 6: Fixing the “Loading…” Network Hang

This took me a minute to figure out. Hopefully this step will alleviate some of the frustrations that I had and get you up and running quickly.

If Network Preferences or ifconfig freezes the OS, the legacy motherboard emulation is dropping hardware interrupts — bypass it entirely:

1. Force-quit the VM (Power icon in UTM).
2. Settings → Network tab: change the emulated network card/model to virtio-net-pci.
3. Settings → System → Advanced: turn ON Force Multicore (VirtIO needs stable CPU timing threads).
4. Save and reboot — Haiku bypasses the legacy drivers and shares the Mac’s network stack directly.

Phase 7: Share your Success

if this worked for you and you are able to get everything up and running, please share a screenshot of your desktop. I’d love to see it

Also available on Gemini →