However, you can still install Windows on an M1 Mac without Boot Camp by using Parallels instead. Unfortunately the following instructions to install Windows on a Mac without Boot Camp only work on Intel Macs.Īpple Silicon M1, M2 and M3 Macs have advanced security protection that won’t allow you to boot from an external drive. Can You Install Windows on an M1, M2 or M3 Mac Without Boot Camp? You only have to buy an activation key for Windows 10 or Windows 11 if you want to remove a small watermark from them and customize them. The other great thing is you can install Windows on a Mac for free nowadays.
This also has the advantage that Windows does not take-up any of your hard drive space on your Mac’s hard drive as it’s all stored and run on an external drive. However, if you want to keep your Mac and Windows files truly separate or don’t have enough hard drive space on your Mac’s internal hard drive, then an even better way to install Windows on a Mac is by using an external hard drive to run Windows. You can also read more about the best virtual machines for Mac here. The best way to install Windows on a Mac is using a virtual machine such as Parallels which is easily the best alternative to Boot Camp. You can’t run them at simultaneously like you can with a virtual machine.Īnother big problem is that the latest M1, M2 and M3 chip Macs do not support Boot Camp so you can’t install Windows on an Apple Silicon Mac with it.īoot Camp also requires a lot of hard drive space on your Mac to install and run Windows plus games or applications that you want to use with it. One of them is that you can only boot your Mac in Windows on macOS using Boot Camp. However, Boot Camp has quite a few disadvantages when it comes to installing and running Windows on a Mac. Until the release of Apple Silicon M1 Macs, Boot Camp was one of the most popular ways to install Windows on a Mac, especially for gaming. How To Install Windows Without Boot Camp.Can You Install Windows on an M1, M2 or M3 Mac Without Boot Camp?.If you have multiple internal hard drives, you can select a different hard drive from the one running macOS and create a single partition on that drive to use solely for Windows. This process may take a long time to complete (you can click the Stop button to interrupt this process).Īt the Create a Partition for Windows step, specify a partition size by dragging the divider between the macOS and Windows partitions.
The Windows files are copied to the USB drive. This process may take a long time to complete (you can click the Stop button to skip this process).Īt the Select Tasks step, select all the tasks, then click Continue.Īt the Create Bootable USB Drive for Windows Installation step, choose the Windows ISO image and the USB drive, then click Continue. Older Time Machine snapshots and cached iCloud files are removed to make space for Boot Camp. The system is checked for total available disk space. On your Mac, open Boot Camp Assistant, located in /Applications/Utilities.Īt the introduction screen, click Continue. Important: If you’re using a Mac laptop computer, connect it to a power source before continuing.Ĭonnect an external USB drive or insert a flash drive into the USB port on your Mac keep it connected or inserted while you install Windows and the Windows support software.