Nested Virtualization on Apple Silicon

Please add my voice to the choir of users asking for nested virtualization support in Parallels. I'm running a Windows 11 ARM VM, and would like to be able to use WSL2 and Docker there. Thanks!

 

How many people have been asking about nested virtualization support on Apple Silicon? Are you going to add this support or not? If you are, just give an ETA, and if not, then tell everyone no, so we can switch to another product. It's that simple. What's up with ignoring everyone who's posted asking about this for so many years?

 

I would like to add, that running wsl2 directly, especially when using vscode and developing cross platform compatible software is both a requirement and a must have to develop efficiently on a parallels Win VM. Please prioritize the implementation of the capability for parallels desktop.

 

could we please get a statement from parallels about their plans, on whether or not nested virtualization will be implemented in order to run wsl2 in parallels Windoes VMs? That would be very helpful, thank you!

 

This recently bit me. I was evaluating Apple's new containerization tool `https://github.com/apple/container` and had installed the macOS beta as it needed for some new networking features that only that beta provides for that tool. When I tried to spin up the container it complained that nested virtualization was not allowed on that virtual hardware.

 

As others have previously mentioned, WSL2 is a big one. It streamlines a lot of dev pipelines, and some newer Windows compatible software depend on it.

Also, as of about a month ago, Epic has started supporting ARM64 Windows devices in Easy Anti Cheat (https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/whats-new#eos-11713-cl44532354--2025-aug-12). Many games which were previously completely out of scope for Parallels would now launch if nested virtualization was implemented (as should be possible: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/updates/hypervisor). EAC would previous throw an error about the ARM64 platform, but that has evolved to a complaint about the lack of HVCI (hypervisor-protected code integrity), which can normally be turned on in Windows Security *when* hardware virtualization is supported.

Given how useful WSL2 is, and how prevalent Easy Anti Cheat is in modern games, I feel like there is plenty of motive here. I would really appreciate if we could get some sort of confirmation (or not) about whether or not this is considered. Thank you.

 

would someone from Parallels staff chime in on this? This kind of boils on and on and we're not really making progress on that topic. An official statements beyond the standing "We don't support WSL2!" would be nice, as both the hardware-specs from the apple-silicon side and the host OS (MacOS) support nested virtualization for quite some time now. Thank You!