**Installing Windows 10 for ARM using Parallels Desktop**

As an M1 Mac user, you may have noticed that Apple's latest lineup of laptops and desktops come with Apple Silicon processors. While these new chips bring several benefits, such as improved performance and power efficiency, they also introduce some limitations when it comes to running certain applications. If you're like me and prefer to use Windows software for work or personal reasons, there is a solution that can help you get the best of both worlds.

The solution lies in using Parallels Desktop, a virtualization software that allows you to run Windows on your Mac. With the latest version of Parallels, which I've tested extensively, it's now possible to install Windows 10 for ARM (a64) on an M1 Mac. This is a great compromise for those who need to use Windows applications but don't want to sacrifice their Apple experience.

To start the process, you'll first need to join the Windows Insider Program. This will allow you to receive the latest updates and features as soon as they're released. Once you've joined the program, you can sign in with your Microsoft account to link it with Parallels Desktop.

After that, you'll need to check for updates on your Mac. You should see a notification from Parallels asking you to install Windows 10 for ARM using the latest version of their software. From there, follow the prompts to download and install the operating system.

**Setting up Windows 10 for ARM**

During the installation process, you'll need to link your Windows Insider account to Parallels Desktop. This is a crucial step that ensures you receive the latest updates and features. Don't worry if this seems like a hassle; it's worth the effort to stay up-to-date with the latest software.

If you don't care about receiving the latest and greatest updates, you can keep the Windows Insider settings disabled. However, I recommend keeping them enabled, as the installation process has been rock-solid from what I've tested so far.

Once the installation is complete, you'll need to restart your Mac. This will take a little time to finish the installation, but Parallels has sped things up significantly. After the restart, you'll be able to install your favorite apps and games without any issues.

One of the best things about using Windows on an M1 Mac with Parallels Desktop is that x64 applications work seamlessly out of the box. This means you can download apps from the Microsoft Store and use them without any compatibility issues. You can also download other apps that you need for Windows, which is a major advantage over running macOS only.

**Gaming on an M1 Mac with Parallels Desktop**

While the M1 chip has its strengths in certain areas, such as general performance and power efficiency, it still falls short when it comes to gaming. The most RAM you can configure is 16GB, which is a significant limitation for running demanding games. However, some games do work well on the M1 Mac, especially those from Apple Arcade.

I've tested Rocket League, one of my favorite games, and it runs smoothly at 1080p, albeit with some occasional stutters. The GPU is still not up to par with dedicated gaming hardware, but it's good enough for casual gaming and other use cases where graphics aren't the top priority.

In conclusion, using Parallels Desktop on an M1 Mac allows you to run Windows software while still enjoying the benefits of macOS. While there are some limitations when it comes to gaming and resource-intensive applications, this solution provides a great compromise for those who need both worlds. With the latest version of Parallels, installing Windows 10 for ARM is easier than ever, and I highly recommend giving it a try.

**Technical Details**

If you're interested in diving deeper into technical details, here are some key points to keep in mind:

* The M1 chip's integrated GPU is still relatively weak compared to dedicated gaming hardware.

* While the M1 Mac can run x64 applications seamlessly, there may be occasional compatibility issues with older software.

* Parallels Desktop has made significant improvements in stability and performance since its technical preview, but some users may still experience occasional glitches or lag.

Overall, using Parallels Desktop on an M1 Mac is a great way to get the best of both worlds. With its latest version, you can install Windows 10 for ARM with ease, run x64 applications seamlessly, and enjoy a rock-solid virtualization experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou click this video because you want to know how to easily install windows 10 for arm on your m1 mac maybe you have a certain app that you need that's windows only and you don't want to buy a dedicated windows machine well the good news is that it is super easy to use parallels desktop 16 for mac to run windows 10 on your m1 mac at the end thumbs up if you find this video helpful but before we get started a brief word from our sponsor 905 mac is sponsored by air buddy 2 a must have utility for airpods users the original version was great but air buddy 2 comes with tons of new incredible features it extends mac os to improve your airpods experience and it's fully compatible with bixer and apple silicon just open your charging case next to your mac to see a beautiful ui with info on batteries connection and status with airbuddy2 you can connect and change listening modes at the same time with a single trackpad gesture automate system volume audio input and listening mode so you're ready to go into a video call with just a single click and you can enjoy custom global keyboard shortcuts that allow you to quickly connect to disconnect from or change listening modes on your devices go to air buddy dot app slash nine to five mac to learn more the first 100 ninety-five mac viewers to use that url will get airbuddy with a 20 discount and stay tuned to the end of this video to learn about even more things that air buddy 2 can do for you so step number one is to download and install parallels desktop 16 for mac so you literally just open up safari type in parallels.com the official website of parallels desktop so under parallels desktop 16 for mac click download free trial and then on this screen here you want to click download now and that's going to save the parallels desktop 16 installer to your mac so you'll find it in the downloads folder most likely you just want to click install parallels desktop that's going to mount the dmg and then from there it's just a matter of double clicking on install parallels desktop like this and if you get this little prompt just click open and then it will download additional files required to install parallels desktop so just be patient while this happens then you'll see where it says installing so there we go it's that simple that easy now just put in your administrator password and click ok and then you should see where it says initializing parallels desktop and again this will take just a few more seconds but like i said this whole process couldn't be simpler so now once parallel's desktop is finished initializing you'll see this install on arm and that means it's time for the next step registering as a windows insider now i'll have a link down below to the windows insider program in the description of this video but parallels was nice enough they were kind enough to actually include a link that takes you to a parallel support document which includes links to the windows insider into the windows for arm download so you just click that link and then on this page you'll see where it says install windows 10 on arm so if you scroll down just a little bit you'll see the link visit the microsoft windows insider preview downloads webpage so just click that link and again i'll have that linked in the description as well and here's the thing in order to download windows for arm from microsoft you have to be a part of their windows insider program which is sort of like a beta program if you will the good news is that it's super easy to become a windows insider doesn't require any sort of special privileges you don't have to pay anything you simply click where it says learn more on this screen and that will walk you through the steps necessary to become a windows insider so that you can gain access to the windows for rm technical previews just click learn more if you aren't already set up as a windows insider but if you are then you simply log in and download the windows 10 on arm insider preview so that's what we're going to do right now in this next step so you see the little login button in the upper right hand corner just click there click allow if you get a little prompt and now i'm going to log in with my microsoft account which again is set up as a windows insider so password and that will give me access to the windows insider previews downloads page and then i will see this button here to download the windows 10 client arm 64 insider preview now the build number may differ depending on when you follow this tutorial so just keep that in mind that's okay so now it's downloading you can see the size is fairly large so we're talking almost 10 gigabytes so this will take a while depending on your internet connection thankfully i'm fortunate enough to have a fiber connection which usually makes pretty quick work of downloads like this so now we're ready to go to the next step and that is configuring windows 10 using parallels so close the windows insider preview page and now you'll get back to your installation assistant for parallels click continue and then you want to click where it says install windows or another os see below you can also download linux as well maybe i'll do that in another tutorial thumbs up if you want to see that but during the initial installation of parallels it will ask you for access to folders like your documents in your downloads folder and that allows it to search out for eligible installers and it found mine right there in the downloads folder but in this case i'm still going to click install manually just to show you how that's done so you simply drag the windows 10 insider preview vhdx file from the downloads folder up into the installation assistant just like that and then click continue and now the installation assistant will give you some options as to how you like to use your windows installation you can choose productivity or games only in this instance and all it's really doing here is pre-configuring some of the settings to meet your needs you can always go ahead and configure these settings later as well so i'm choosing productivity i'm going to click continue and now you see the name windows 10 we can leave it as is you see the save to location leave it as is i'm going to uncheck create alias and i'm going to check customize settings before installation and then click create and this will take just a few seconds just be patient here and then in just a second we'll get the ability to configure our virtual machine installation and it's going pretty quickly now all right so almost there there we go all right so now it gives us the opportunity to configure windows 10 with this particular virtual machine so you can click options you have startup and shutdown options application all sorts of different settings you can configure but what i'm really interested in is the hardware and specifically the processors which you can configure here so i have an eight core cpu so i can give it four cores or half and i have 16 gigabytes of ram on this particular mac so i'm going to give it half 8 gigabytes so obviously depending on the configuration of your machine you're going to want to alter these processor and memory settings accordingly so just keep that in mind you can always go back and change it later as well just be sure to leave plenty of resources for your mac installation alright so now it's time to install windows 10 so you simply click continue and it will start the windows 10 installation just like that now as you might expect this will take a while and i have sped this up considerably so just be patient let windows do its thing as it configures and gets everything ready for you but now as you can see we're almost there and our installation is complete so now ready to go to the next step and that is signing in to your parallels account now parallels will require you upon clicking where it says installation complete to sign in with your parallels account and they give you a free 14-day trial with parallels desktop 16 for mac and that's good news because if you find yourself in a bind and you don't have a dedicated windows machine but you really need windows for some reason well you can simply sign up for the 14 day trial with parallels desktop 16 for mac download the windows insider preview for windows for arm and you're good to go so i've logged in with my parallels account that has the 14-day trial enabled but with that said you'll definitely want to consider purchasing a license if you plan on regularly using windows on your mac and you can do so by clicking the buy button in the upper right hand corner and then you have several options available depending on your requirements for the m1 mac i think the standard edition would be sufficient at eighty dollars with up to eight gigabytes of virtual ram and four virtual cpus but again there's a 14 day trial the next step is to run windows update so you want to go to the start menu go to settings and then click where it says update in security and then click resume updates now this will take a while to download all the necessary windows updates on this initial installation now another thing to consider is that if you wish to stay a part of the windows insider program on this installation you may want to consider going into where it says windows insider program and then clicking where it says go to diagnostics and feedback and then you'll need to enable the optional diagnostic data in order to receive continuous bleeding edge windows insider program updates and then of course you'll have to link your windows insider account here as well now if you don't care about receiving the latest and greatest updates you can keep all that disabled and just go about your business as normal and i actually kind of recommend that if you're not someone who wants the latest and greatest because this installation is pretty rock solid from what i've tested thus far so now you just go ahead and restart once the windows update is completed and this will take a little bit of time to finish the installation but of course i've sped things up to get through it as soon as possible so there we go all right so all the windows updates are released most of them are configured and set up all right so now it's going to reinstall parallels tools which will require another restart alright so one last time i'm gonna go back to windows update start menu settings windows update and check for updates just to make sure i didn't miss anything all right so yeah one last little update that was it we're good to go so now you can install your favorite apps and games now the cool thing about this is that x64 apps work out of the box so for instance the windows store works right out of the box and you can download apps from the windows store and use those but of course you can also download other apps that you may need for windows and that's kind of the whole point of running windows on a mac because not every application that's available for windows is available on the mac for instance a lot of games that you find on steam aren't available on steam for mac and there are a lot of other use cases where there is an app that you need on windows that isn't available on the mac so you need to run windows and this is a great compromise for those times when you need those applications and you don't want to buy a separate windows machine for instance because of course boot camp doesn't run at all on max with apple silicon so let's go ahead and run rocket league now i'll say this as good as the m1 max are and as much praise as i've heaped on them they're still relatively anemic as far as resources are concerned i mean the most ram you can configure is just 16 gigabytes so that's going to be an issue when it comes to running virtual machines and obviously the the gpu is really good for specific use cases like with final cut pro especially good for integrated graphics but for things like games it's still pretty much yeah it's not it's not all that great so temper your expectations accordingly when it comes to gaming on an m1 max some games work great especially a lot of the apple arcade titles but when you get to really intense 3d games obviously rocket league isn't isn't among the most demanding games out there but you can see even it sort of struggles running at 1080p on this m1 mac but the point is you can you can play rocket league on your m1 mac you can run all sorts of windows software on an m1 mac and it's pretty solid as far as stability is concerned parallels has really done a good job of making their virtualization software rock solid on the mac and all the things you love about a virtual machine like being able to set up snapshots and things like that things that didn't work on the technical preview of parallels now work here on this shipping version of parallels desktop for max16 so i wouldn't consider a virtual machine a bootcamp replacement but on apple silicon virtualization is pretty much the only options we have for running windows and it's easy to set up and a pretty good option at that what do you guys think would you consider installing windows 10 for arm using parallels on your mac leave me a thumbs up if you appreciated this video and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff with nine to five mac 905 mac is sponsored by air buddy 2 a must have utility for airpods users as we discussed airbody 2 is the perfect companion for airpods it also extends mac os with the batteries widget and menu bar icon that shows all your devices intelligently grouped and smart stats give you battery usage over time total listening time call time and shows you which airpod is draining its battery more quickly but airbuddy goes beyond headphones it can show battery information for your ios devices accessories like the magic keyboard magic mouse and even other mac's running air buddy including their accessories and with the magic handoff you can transfer a magic mouse trackpad or keyboard between two macs running airbuddy with just a few clicks go to airbuddy.app slash 905 map to learn more the first 195 map viewers to use that url will get airbuddy with a 20 discount special thanks to airbuddy2 for sponsoring 9-5 mac youyou click this video because you want to know how to easily install windows 10 for arm on your m1 mac maybe you have a certain app that you need that's windows only and you don't want to buy a dedicated windows machine well the good news is that it is super easy to use parallels desktop 16 for mac to run windows 10 on your m1 mac at the end thumbs up if you find this video helpful but before we get started a brief word from our sponsor 905 mac is sponsored by air buddy 2 a must have utility for airpods users the original version was great but air buddy 2 comes with tons of new incredible features it extends mac os to improve your airpods experience and it's fully compatible with bixer and apple silicon just open your charging case next to your mac to see a beautiful ui with info on batteries connection and status with airbuddy2 you can connect and change listening modes at the same time with a single trackpad gesture automate system volume audio input and listening mode so you're ready to go into a video call with just a single click and you can enjoy custom global keyboard shortcuts that allow you to quickly connect to disconnect from or change listening modes on your devices go to air buddy dot app slash nine to five mac to learn more the first 100 ninety-five mac viewers to use that url will get airbuddy with a 20 discount and stay tuned to the end of this video to learn about even more things that air buddy 2 can do for you so step number one is to download and install parallels desktop 16 for mac so you literally just open up safari type in parallels.com the official website of parallels desktop so under parallels desktop 16 for mac click download free trial and then on this screen here you want to click download now and that's going to save the parallels desktop 16 installer to your mac so you'll find it in the downloads folder most likely you just want to click install parallels desktop that's going to mount the dmg and then from there it's just a matter of double clicking on install parallels desktop like this and if you get this little prompt just click open and then it will download additional files required to install parallels desktop so just be patient while this happens then you'll see where it says installing so there we go it's that simple that easy now just put in your administrator password and click ok and then you should see where it says initializing parallels desktop and again this will take just a few more seconds but like i said this whole process couldn't be simpler so now once parallel's desktop is finished initializing you'll see this install on arm and that means it's time for the next step registering as a windows insider now i'll have a link down below to the windows insider program in the description of this video but parallels was nice enough they were kind enough to actually include a link that takes you to a parallel support document which includes links to the windows insider into the windows for arm download so you just click that link and then on this page you'll see where it says install windows 10 on arm so if you scroll down just a little bit you'll see the link visit the microsoft windows insider preview downloads webpage so just click that link and again i'll have that linked in the description as well and here's the thing in order to download windows for arm from microsoft you have to be a part of their windows insider program which is sort of like a beta program if you will the good news is that it's super easy to become a windows insider doesn't require any sort of special privileges you don't have to pay anything you simply click where it says learn more on this screen and that will walk you through the steps necessary to become a windows insider so that you can gain access to the windows for rm technical previews just click learn more if you aren't already set up as a windows insider but if you are then you simply log in and download the windows 10 on arm insider preview so that's what we're going to do right now in this next step so you see the little login button in the upper right hand corner just click there click allow if you get a little prompt and now i'm going to log in with my microsoft account which again is set up as a windows insider so password and that will give me access to the windows insider previews downloads page and then i will see this button here to download the windows 10 client arm 64 insider preview now the build number may differ depending on when you follow this tutorial so just keep that in mind that's okay so now it's downloading you can see the size is fairly large so we're talking almost 10 gigabytes so this will take a while depending on your internet connection thankfully i'm fortunate enough to have a fiber connection which usually makes pretty quick work of downloads like this so now we're ready to go to the next step and that is configuring windows 10 using parallels so close the windows insider preview page and now you'll get back to your installation assistant for parallels click continue and then you want to click where it says install windows or another os see below you can also download linux as well maybe i'll do that in another tutorial thumbs up if you want to see that but during the initial installation of parallels it will ask you for access to folders like your documents in your downloads folder and that allows it to search out for eligible installers and it found mine right there in the downloads folder but in this case i'm still going to click install manually just to show you how that's done so you simply drag the windows 10 insider preview vhdx file from the downloads folder up into the installation assistant just like that and then click continue and now the installation assistant will give you some options as to how you like to use your windows installation you can choose productivity or games only in this instance and all it's really doing here is pre-configuring some of the settings to meet your needs you can always go ahead and configure these settings later as well so i'm choosing productivity i'm going to click continue and now you see the name windows 10 we can leave it as is you see the save to location leave it as is i'm going to uncheck create alias and i'm going to check customize settings before installation and then click create and this will take just a few seconds just be patient here and then in just a second we'll get the ability to configure our virtual machine installation and it's going pretty quickly now all right so almost there there we go all right so now it gives us the opportunity to configure windows 10 with this particular virtual machine so you can click options you have startup and shutdown options application all sorts of different settings you can configure but what i'm really interested in is the hardware and specifically the processors which you can configure here so i have an eight core cpu so i can give it four cores or half and i have 16 gigabytes of ram on this particular mac so i'm going to give it half 8 gigabytes so obviously depending on the configuration of your machine you're going to want to alter these processor and memory settings accordingly so just keep that in mind you can always go back and change it later as well just be sure to leave plenty of resources for your mac installation alright so now it's time to install windows 10 so you simply click continue and it will start the windows 10 installation just like that now as you might expect this will take a while and i have sped this up considerably so just be patient let windows do its thing as it configures and gets everything ready for you but now as you can see we're almost there and our installation is complete so now ready to go to the next step and that is signing in to your parallels account now parallels will require you upon clicking where it says installation complete to sign in with your parallels account and they give you a free 14-day trial with parallels desktop 16 for mac and that's good news because if you find yourself in a bind and you don't have a dedicated windows machine but you really need windows for some reason well you can simply sign up for the 14 day trial with parallels desktop 16 for mac download the windows insider preview for windows for arm and you're good to go so i've logged in with my parallels account that has the 14-day trial enabled but with that said you'll definitely want to consider purchasing a license if you plan on regularly using windows on your mac and you can do so by clicking the buy button in the upper right hand corner and then you have several options available depending on your requirements for the m1 mac i think the standard edition would be sufficient at eighty dollars with up to eight gigabytes of virtual ram and four virtual cpus but again there's a 14 day trial the next step is to run windows update so you want to go to the start menu go to settings and then click where it says update in security and then click resume updates now this will take a while to download all the necessary windows updates on this initial installation now another thing to consider is that if you wish to stay a part of the windows insider program on this installation you may want to consider going into where it says windows insider program and then clicking where it says go to diagnostics and feedback and then you'll need to enable the optional diagnostic data in order to receive continuous bleeding edge windows insider program updates and then of course you'll have to link your windows insider account here as well now if you don't care about receiving the latest and greatest updates you can keep all that disabled and just go about your business as normal and i actually kind of recommend that if you're not someone who wants the latest and greatest because this installation is pretty rock solid from what i've tested thus far so now you just go ahead and restart once the windows update is completed and this will take a little bit of time to finish the installation but of course i've sped things up to get through it as soon as possible so there we go all right so all the windows updates are released most of them are configured and set up all right so now it's going to reinstall parallels tools which will require another restart alright so one last time i'm gonna go back to windows update start menu settings windows update and check for updates just to make sure i didn't miss anything all right so yeah one last little update that was it we're good to go so now you can install your favorite apps and games now the cool thing about this is that x64 apps work out of the box so for instance the windows store works right out of the box and you can download apps from the windows store and use those but of course you can also download other apps that you may need for windows and that's kind of the whole point of running windows on a mac because not every application that's available for windows is available on the mac for instance a lot of games that you find on steam aren't available on steam for mac and there are a lot of other use cases where there is an app that you need on windows that isn't available on the mac so you need to run windows and this is a great compromise for those times when you need those applications and you don't want to buy a separate windows machine for instance because of course boot camp doesn't run at all on max with apple silicon so let's go ahead and run rocket league now i'll say this as good as the m1 max are and as much praise as i've heaped on them they're still relatively anemic as far as resources are concerned i mean the most ram you can configure is just 16 gigabytes so that's going to be an issue when it comes to running virtual machines and obviously the the gpu is really good for specific use cases like with final cut pro especially good for integrated graphics but for things like games it's still pretty much yeah it's not it's not all that great so temper your expectations accordingly when it comes to gaming on an m1 max some games work great especially a lot of the apple arcade titles but when you get to really intense 3d games obviously rocket league isn't isn't among the most demanding games out there but you can see even it sort of struggles running at 1080p on this m1 mac but the point is you can you can play rocket league on your m1 mac you can run all sorts of windows software on an m1 mac and it's pretty solid as far as stability is concerned parallels has really done a good job of making their virtualization software rock solid on the mac and all the things you love about a virtual machine like being able to set up snapshots and things like that things that didn't work on the technical preview of parallels now work here on this shipping version of parallels desktop for max16 so i wouldn't consider a virtual machine a bootcamp replacement but on apple silicon virtualization is pretty much the only options we have for running windows and it's easy to set up and a pretty good option at that what do you guys think would you consider installing windows 10 for arm using parallels on your mac leave me a thumbs up if you appreciated this video and subscribe for more videos like this this is jeff with nine to five mac 905 mac is sponsored by air buddy 2 a must have utility for airpods users as we discussed airbody 2 is the perfect companion for airpods it also extends mac os with the batteries widget and menu bar icon that shows all your devices intelligently grouped and smart stats give you battery usage over time total listening time call time and shows you which airpod is draining its battery more quickly but airbuddy goes beyond headphones it can show battery information for your ios devices accessories like the magic keyboard magic mouse and even other mac's running air buddy including their accessories and with the magic handoff you can transfer a magic mouse trackpad or keyboard between two macs running airbuddy with just a few clicks go to airbuddy.app slash 905 map to learn more the first 195 map viewers to use that url will get airbuddy with a 20 discount special thanks to airbuddy2 for sponsoring 9-5 mac you\n"