VMs Fail to Boot with Bridged WiFi on Apple M5 Pro Machines
VMs can't boot with Network Mode set to Bridged on Apple M5 Pro machines
Users report that virtual machines cannot boot when using Bridged network mode on Apple M5 Pro devices, specifically over WiFi connections. While the issue affects multiple virtualization platforms like UTM, VirtualBox, and Parallels, bridging works correctly with Ethernet adapters. The community is debating whether this is a limitation of the new N1 network chip or a fundamental constraint of the IEEE 802.11 standard regarding WiFi bridging.
Wifi and Wifi NICs don't support bridged mode. This is not a limitation of UTM or macOS, it is a limitation of the connection at the MAC layer.
- Aurornis
Classic GitHub issue thread: Someone shows up and tries to explain it’s not a bug and never could have worked. Everyone else points out that it does work on other Mac hardware. Person doubles down and tries to claim that the bug was that it ever worked, and not working is the correct behavior. New Mac OS beta release fixes the bug and makes it work. Nothing related to the repo was changed.
- billti
I couldn't get bridged networking to work with my M5 machine and VMs running on Parallels. This thread here would seem to indicate it's a known issue (with no updates or resolution :/ ) - https://forum.parallels.com/threads/m5-macbook-air-windows-1...
- juancn
I love when things work out in the end!
(issue is fixed in the latest MacOS 26 and 27 betas)
- TheqO
The M5 Pro and M5 Max support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 via Apple's N1 wireless networking chip, while the base M5 supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
- mcfdoesdev
That's super weird.