Your favorite system. Your everyday machine. Run FreeBSD on Apple Silicon with a lightweight, native virtual machine monitor built in Rust.

Apple Silicon · macOS 15+ · 8.4 MB DMG · Notarized by Apple

Bring a different operating system into your day. Keep the tools and the Mac you already love.

Open a FreeBSD desktop in a native Cocoa and Metal window. Or connect through the built-in VNC server.

Give your VMs a name. Start them, check their status, and manage their configuration with cubectl.

Use NAT or bridged networking. Share host folders with your guest, even when networking is off.

Cube uses Apple’s Hypervisor.framework directly, with a Rust virtual machine monitor and a Swift menu bar companion. Real hardware virtualization, with the source open to explore.

Create a FreeBSD VM, connect over SSH, and share your project files. Keep it all a command away with cubectl.

Open Cube.app and choose “Open Terminal (Cube Environment)” to use the bundled cube and cubectl commands. Follow the setup guide for your first VM.

Download FreeBSD and install it unattended

% cubectl create freebsd-dev
--version 14.4 --unattended
--ram 2048 --cpus 2 --ssh-port 2222

Boot the installed guest

% cubectl start freebsd-dev

The first command downloads the FreeBSD ARM64 disc1 ISO and completes installation before returning. Start Cube’s network service before booting the installed guest. Installation steps ↗

Connect to your installed, running guest

% cubectl ssh freebsd-dev

Inside FreeBSD

uname -sm

FreeBSD arm64

exit

Requires guest sshd, a reachable SSH endpoint, and valid credentials. The output above is illustrative. SSH setup ↗

Start a stopped VM with a read-only export

% cubectl start freebsd-dev
--share web-root "$HOME/Projects/web"

Inside FreeBSD, as root

kldload virtio_p9fs

mkdir -p /mnt/web

mount -t p9fs web-root /mnt/web

The Mac directory must exist. To allow changes to the original host files, use --share-rw. Host and guest commands run in separate terminals. Sharing guide ↗

Open Cube.app, use the CLI, and boot FreeBSD.

Choose a network mode and understand service setup.

Manage VMs, share folders, and solve common issues.

Cube runs ARM64 FreeBSD guests on Apple Silicon. Explore live shells, persistent installations, and graphical desktops. See the documentation for verified configurations and current limitations.

Yes. Download the notarized DMG, open it, and drag Cube.app into Applications. Launch Cube from Applications and follow the setup guide. Developer instructions are in Build from source.

The display uses a simple framebuffer with a fixed boot-time resolution. There is no 3D acceleration, runtime display resizing, or clipboard synchronization. VNC accepts one loopback client at a time.

Yes. Cube is licensed under Apache 2.0. Browse the source, read the architecture and verification guides, or explore the roadmap on GitHub.