Will the Virtualization Framework support iCloud accounts?

The new Virtualization framework (and sample code!) are great. It's a lot of fun to run the sample code and quickly fire up multiple VMs of macOS running as a guest.

However, the inability to authenticate with any iCloud services is a significant roadblock. Xcode, for example, is not allowing me to authenticate my developer account.

Are there any plans to resolve this issue so that iCloud accounts can be authenticated from within a VM?

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Thanks for the feedback. This is definitely an interesting use case.

There are different challenges and security implications with each service enabled in virtual machines. Could you please file a feature request in Feedback Assistant? Please include which services are required and why as this helps understand the needs.

  • Filed as FB10113830.

  • I'm testing macOS 13 and Xcode 14 in VM via UTM app. I can't sign in with my AppleID into Xcode. So Automatic code signing does not work unless I change my project settings and issue certificates manually.

    Another use case is downloading my apps from the App Store to test production versions or update/upgrade process.

    I've submitted feedback FB10126526.

    What are the security implications of this? I've been using my AppleID for the same purposes within VMs on Intel Mac through VMware Fusion.

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Sure thing, though as a perfect example of what I'm referring to, I actually can't log into Feedback Assistant within a virtual machine. Feedback Assistant's login screen simply reports "An error occurred during authentication." when I enter my Apple Developer credentials.

I can, of course, log into Feedback Assistant from the host macOS instance, but not from within the guest instance. At the moment, my host is running Monterey while my guest is running Ventura. I'd like to spend more time testing Ventura and building software within it, but without access to iCloud or my developer account, it makes that goal almost impossible.

I second this notion. Not being able to use my iCloud account for testing and development on a beta OS makes the VM not usable for me. But, I do congratulate the team on how easy it all was to set up!

No iCloud support is an M1 VM was a terrible decision made by Apple.

I cannot test my own software that has Sign on with Apple on an M1 VM. Can't use any iCloud storage that an app might use during testing on an M1 VM. I cannot build software with a Apple Developer account on an M1 VM.

I am being redundant here to make this painfully clear.

Please add in this feature and support iCloud 100% inside a VM. Please don't make it terribly hard for any VM author to support like forcing them to get an unobtainable highly restricted entitlement. This should have worked out of the box from day 1. It should just be a flag in the framework such as, iCloud supported YES or iCloud supported NO via an info.plist.

Whoever chose not to allow iCloud within an M1 VM wasn't considering the implications this has on all Apple Developers.

Because of this, I have to do all test directly on bare metal.

I will third, forth, fifth and however many times it needs to be said to have this (Apple logins) supported in a macOS VM. It's quite pointless to have macOS support in a VM if it ends up being neutered on its most basic functionality.

I encourage Apple to re-read StarPlayr's comment as many times a day as humanly possible, because they hit the nail on the head - this should've "just work[ed]" from day 1.

I want to add my vote for this as well. Many aspects of both developing software, and simply testing the beta OS releases, require iCloud. It hampers both sides of a VM use (dev and testing) to not have this. Apple, please reconsider and add support for iCloud to the macOS VM support before WWDC 2023.

Any news on this. I just replaced my laptop to virtualize and found this crazy bug. Missing access to the entire App Store makes a virtualized OS almost useless.

  • I completely agree. What is the point of virtualizing macOS if you can't use more than its most basic features? Practically everything interesting requires iCloud authentication.

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Hi,

Any news on this?

Thanks.

Not really. See this thread for the latest.

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