deputyOS on macOS
Run deputyOS on a Mac through UTM or OrbStack. Apple Silicon gets hardware acceleration; Intel Macs fall back to slower emulation.
- Setup time
- ~10 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Cost
- free
- Acceleration
- HVF on Apple Silicon, TCG on Intel
On macOS, deputyOS runs as a VM wrapping the qemu-aarch64 build, driven by
either UTM or OrbStack.
Apple Silicon versus Intel
This matters more than anything else on this page.
Apple Silicon (M1 and later) runs the arm64 image natively through the Hypervisor framework (HVF). Performance is good and unified memory means a VM can be given enough RAM to run real local models.
Intel Macs must emulate arm64 in software via TCG. It works, but expect roughly an order of magnitude slowdown. Usable for evaluation, painful for daily use.
Install
Download the macos-qemu artefact from the picker and run the wrapper:
./macos/run-utm.sh # UTM
./macos/run-orbstack.sh # OrbStackThe script configures memory, CPU and port forwarding, then boots. The wizard is at
http://localhost:8080.
Memory
Give the VM at least 4 GB, and 8–16 GB if you want local models. On Apple Silicon that memory is genuinely shared rather than reserved, so being generous costs less than it would on a PC.
What this is good for
Evaluation, development, and running an assistant while you work. It is not an always-on appliance — the VM stops when you shut the lid or reboot.
The picker’s cloud and dedicated-hardware targets are the always-on answer, and the profile you configure here transfers unchanged.