UTM SE: Retro PC emulator Reviews

Don’t expect super great performance with modern operating systems. This isn’t UTM’s fault, this is due to Apple’s dumb policies on how third-party apps can run (yet conveniently not theirs, oops).

Long story short, I’d say Windows XP or a lightweight Linux distro is the upper limit of what you can do. That’s a ton of really fun possibilities!

That being said, it would be great if there could be more robust Magic Keyboard support for the iPad version. Currently, the trackpad cannot control the cursor. If it’s supported, it should be easier to configure. It tends to crash when trying to leave a VM as well, regardless of RAM allocation or complexity of the VM. For context, I’m using an M4 iPad with the official Magic Keyboard.

It’s so great to see this on UTMSE Store. We’re another step closer to the iPad becoming a useful device because of this team!

Fired up arch Linux on my m4 iPad, I’ve wanted this for so long, I’m thrilled it worked fast and easy. Basic CLI based OS usage is plenty fast and usable, but without JIT the graphical OS performance and modern operating systems like Debian 12 and Windows are just not usable. Know the limitations of apple’s iOS ecosystem and you will be happy with UTMSE, but don’t expect it to work like a MacBook until the JIT rules change.

Love that Apple is coming around to re-examining the notions of a truly open ecosystem, even if sandboxed. This gives users more flexibility (amazing), and the ability to push their extremely capable iDevices to the next level.

Amazing work to the UTM team. Beautiful port from the Mac version. Here’s to many more years of iOS and iPadOS. ❤️✨

So glad this is finally happening! I’d love to get some PowerPC-era OS X / OS 9 VMs working, but the sound card they use isn’t compatible with the iOS version of UTMSE, apparently. I’d love to see that fixed at some point; alternatively, just an option to disable the sound would be great as well. Otherwise, great app, got Windows XP working perfectly!

Hi Apple. Can you please allow UTMSE to use JIT? From what I read it would be much faster and unlock new capabilities. I’m using my iPhone as my daily driver and having all the capabilities inside it would make it the perfect versatile device.

I don’t know how you guys manage to get this impressive “retro gaming system” emulator on here. I’m just happy to see it. I would love to see it not crash when running some of the prebuilt “gaming systems” on yawls website website.

UTMSE is just junk on iOS,without jit it's not useful at all..

tried Win XP now I do have a iPad Air 4 not the latest & greatest but Windows XP is old...
It installed cute,
booted up also cute,
but after that it was a laggy mess even giving it 1-2GB of ram..
Nothing opened well..
Nothing worked..
browser was terrible,
No file share worked nether feature the one that supposedly needs installing pffft lol yea ok that's a joke doesn't do nothing.
Good luck even using the other ..

Managed to install FireFox 52.9.0esr but again slow you need jit to use this & I see why Apple prob allowed it most are not gonna get much use out of UTMSE unless you have the latest most powerful iOS device.

Was cute won't try again.

Glad this found a way to accomplish a speed up without JIT. My phone can run Debian 11 xfce, and it is usable, but very slow on my aging phone (my phone is very old XS Max with only 4gig ram).

It would be amazing if this was ported to the Apple TV as well.

This makes my iPad useful. I can now use my iPad for work. I hope Apple is listening. We NEED virtualization on iPad.

I tried running openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, and all of it was so/too slow even after giving it 6-8gb of RAM and setting cores. I tried x86 64 bit and arm architecture, changing machines and nothing. Text will not render, installers will not load, and even pre-built won’t load past login screen. I would love to use software to run in Linux, but I have yet to see software work. If it updates and works I will be happy to update my review.

Thanks for this! Just sent you all a donation. Please keep up your important work.

I just ran genuine 64bit Linux on a non jailbroke iPhone! I have waited so so so long for this. Finally. Thank you EU regulators!!

I installed Windows 7 on VM
Time it’s time

If you’ve used UTM to emulate x86_64 on an Apple Silicon Mac, you will be BLOWN AWAY by the speed of the “Slow Edition”

I just installed Ubuntu 24.04 Server and its blowing my mind :0

It finally feels like I have an app that can push the limits of this iPad!

无法使用

I was so excited to UTMSE that  was approved about it, but I don’t know where was the ESC key, but I downloaded 2 ISO of Windows 10 and 7, but it said “press any key of CD and DVD file” and “Press ESC in 5 seconds” I don’t why, but I need to know where’s the ESC key?

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

What a great app

Dear all Hello Utm se with window iPad or iPhone fix Update please Kind regards to thanks

Maybe it’s Apple’s fault from lack of jit, but I’ve yet to get a single OS working on iOS. On Mac it will take it 30 seconds max to load, iOS it’s been 20min and still waiting. This is Fedora, Ubuntu, Windows.

UTM is just great! I love that I don't need AltStore now! Please fix OSX sound card issue though.

I am excited for this project, but it still has a ways to go. It does work, but very slowly, at least on an iPad Pro 12.9 Gen 4. Very slow to boot and it is so slow I can’t even boot into the pre-built Linux GUIs. I created a fresh Linux VM without a GUI and while slow, it was easy to setup (took over 9+ hours to install Ubuntu Server). But even in terminal, I cannot log in because of the slowness. As of this writing, I’m logging in and after entering the password, it just sits there. I’m 10 minutes in and still haven’t gotten a prompt. Just a blinking cursor. So while this is a very interesting project, it still needs some work in the speed department. This may be faster on the latest and greatest, but I do not have that (except for the iPhone 15 Pro, which has way too small of a screen for me to test out, but I may amend this review if I do.) Developers, do keep up the good work, though. This is a very useful project for someone who would like to learn Linux, but wants the portability of a tablet. I’m thinking like a student. Also I like to note it is a battery hog. Because it is so slow, I have to keep it plugged in or the iPad would be drained.

Sure, this is not the fastest.
Normal UTM SE(no jit support)
Is slow yes… of course it is. Emulation is slow. Jit, used in Java, is a much faster way than the normal translation (afaik) because in normal qemu with TCG only, it’s much slower than UTM with jit. UTMSE IS NOT FOR USERS WHO WANT A FAST EMULATOR! If you want to tinker with a minimal Arch or Alpine install, sure you are good. At a low resolution, twm, awesome, i3wm, icewm, are all good options for minimal GUI setups. Still better than nothing tho!! And yeah if you have a MacBook (intel or Mx) then it has JIT. Intel has that for non-x86 or hvf (like kvm for Linux) for x86. I do recommend this.

I love this. First of all you need a proper phone, I am using iPhone pro Max - 8gb ram. This can do Debian 11 with 2gb ram just fine. Understand that you do not use your phones full ram, you must partition some away. For iPhone you can only partition 20%, and for pro max that is about 1.6-2gb ram.

Your best bet is an iPad Pro with 16gb ram, maybe the new M chips will help.

You have to be patient and wait for it to load, but running wireshark, Kali Linux, and all the awesome Linux stuff on an iPhone is amazing!!!

Trying to connect and external WiFi adapter for monitor mode usage.

What a disgrace! Everyone knows a REAL virtual machine would have TempleOS in the library. UTMSE is basically useless! I mean, I can get windows to run and stuff… but what’s the point if there is no TempleOS?!

You display the ability to use dos on here. How?

very impressive indeed. one big leap for apple to become more open source and i like the future we are headed. brings back memories when i tried the windows xp version.

I’m hoping there are more updates because what’s here is impressive. I got windows xp to install the original Sims game. Performance is slow but that is to be expected without JIT. Hopefully there is a workaround one day, because while it can run pretty slow, the potential is there. This is an amazing tool

Clicking the License button in Settings freezes and crashes UTMSE .

I was trying to get OSX 10.0 on UTMSE, but it turns out that I need to edit some QEMU parameters to get the cursor working. I had to resort to 10.2, which runs sluggish compared to OSX 10.0 setup. I would greatly appreciate it if you could let people that know what they are doing to edit these parameters and get more out of this amazing app.

This is an amazing app! Great job team. Can you please tell me how to configure the network connection for Windows XP? It’s not working even though spice tools is installed.

Its not work for m4 ipod for some reason the same iphone i am not able to run it. nothing works ! thank you! i wain 45 min to start utm ubuntu mashine its too much !! Are you work the same way on the work as well who create it ! its actually good idea! dont you think to add some buttom to minimize the system by the way i use m4 ipod ! why its so slow! ??? not possible to use i even not able to use on m4 !! wow! who create possitive reviews to this product than!?

emulator do not work on best m4 !!! do not even open!

As others have stated, it it very slow to load any VM. With all the power of the M-series processors, I thought id be able to have a lightweight machine that I can use a Linux VM on. The M4 is far more powerful than my RaspberryPi 3B+, but yet its limited by its software.

I truly think the issues is that this powerful hardware has such a weak OS in iPadOS. I was really hoping iPadOS 18 would have changed that, but hear we are with overkill hardware and no way to use it.

I’ve never used my Idevice this much before , I mean I’ve never imagined running windows or linux or any operating systems other than ios on my iPhone or Ipad 😄😄 , although it’s a little bit slow because of the ” JIT “ policy , but I freakin love it , thanks utm team and apple ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️