Create a MacOS Tahoe 26 Beta VM with Three Commands in Terminal Using tart

Advanced Mac users who are savvy with the command line can rapdly build a MacOS Tahoe 26 beta virtual machine by issuing a few commands into the Terminal, with the help of tart. tart is a command line tool for managing virtual machines, and it’s one of the absolute fastest ways to get a virtual machine of MacOS Tahoe 26 running on any Apple Silicon Mac. After the commands have executed succesfully, macOS Tahoe 26 beta will be running in a windowed virtual machine right away, and performance is quite good on any Apple Silicon Mac. This really is as quick as it gets for Tahoe VM deployment, and after you experience this you’ll likely become a fan of tart.

Because tart is a command line tool that is most easily installed through Homebrew, you’ll need to have have Homebrew installed on the Mac before going any further. If you haven’t used Homebrew in a while, you’ll want to update it first.

How to Make a MacOS Tahoe 26 Beta Virtual Machine with tart at the Command Line

Using tart to quickly deploy a MacOS Tahoe virtual machine is impressively quick. We’re assuming you already have Homebrew installed, otherwise you need to do that first.

1. Open Terminal app on Mac
2. Enter the following command to install tart via Homebrew:

brew install cirruslabs/cli/tart

3. After tart has finished installing, use tart to clone the macOS Tahoe beta image with this command:

tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-tahoe-vanilla:26.0 tahoe

4. MacOS Tahoe 26 beta will download, when you see “100%” the download has finished and you’ll return to the command prompt, which you then execute the next command to launch the MacOS Tahoe virtual machine:
   tart run tahoe
   

MacOS Tahoe quickly boots into a new window through tart:

In just a moment, you’ll see the MacOS Tahoe desktop appear, without even having to go through the typical MacOS setup process, and without having to log in.

MacOS Tahoe tart VM login information

Important Tahoe tart login information: The username and password for the MacOS Tahoe virtual machine is admin/admin, which since this is just a virtual machine for testing purposes, is probably not important to change for most users.

Noneless if you want to change the username/password from admin/admin to something else, or create a new account, you can do that through the standard MacOS process via System Settings in the Tahoe virtual machine:

Closing & Launching the Tahoe tart VM

You can close the window or quit out of Terminal to exit the virtual machine at any time.

To start the Tahoe VM again, you simply need to return to the command line and issue the run command again:

tart run tahoe

If you’re comfortable with the command line, tart is as easy as it gets for a VM setup

It really is that easy; just a few terminal commands, and you’re running the MacOS Tahoe beta in a virtual machine.

For many of us that are comfortable with the command line, getting a vm running through tart is so much faster and easier than the standard process of using virtualization software, and then either using a MacOS installer or IPSW file to create a virtual machine, and then manually going through the standard VM and MacOS setup process. Three commands is all it takes, and the Tahoe VM desktop quickly appears on your Mac.

If you do prefer the GUI VM app methods, you can download a MacOS installer or IPSW file here for the latest version of MacOS Tahoe as well as basically every other version of MacOS that an installer or firmware file is available for.

Troubleshooting tart Tahoe VM creation and error messages

If you’re attempting to setup a VM in tart, or any other virtualization software, you might encounter a “Software update is required” error message, which can be fixed by installing Device Support Update for Tahoe 26, or the latest beta version of Xcode.

Separately, when attempting to clone or download the MacOS Tahoe beta image with tart, you might see a variety of error messages like the following:

Error pulling disk layer 10: "The network connection was lost.", attempting to retry

Or another one that you might see is:

Error pulling disk layer 12: "The request timed out." attempting to re-try...

As you can see in the screenshot above, these error messages were self correcting, and tart was able to successfully download and install the virtual machine image on its own without any intervention. This sequence of errors happened repeatedly for me during several different setups with tart, so it’s possible it’s due to a connection difficulty with the server, or even my own internet connection or wi-fi router. Either way if you see those error messages, see if tart will resolve the issue on it’s own, otherwise you might simply need to run the tart clone command again.

tart clone ghcr.io/cirruslabs/macos-tahoe-vanilla:26.0 tahoe

Once you see “100%”, the run command is ready to go:

tart run tahoe

That’s it.

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Did you try out tart to quickly deploy a MacOS Tahoe 26 beta virtual machine? What did you think of the process? Have you ever used tart to create virtual machines before? Do you have a preferred VM build method or approach? Do you prefer the GUI VM apps, and if so, which ones? Share with us your experiences and thoughts in the comments below.