Mac OS X High Sierra 10.13 VM in VMWare Workstation 14

Click here for installing Big Sur in VMWare Workstation

To get started we need to download the High Sierra ISO. Click the link to download the ISO. If your getting the message “This copy of the Install macOS High Sierra.app application is damaged…”, set your Mac date back to Dec 2018. Thanks to randell for the info. The fix can be found here:

Medium.com

Sha1sum: 48757AB383D390E660062D0B1E2ACF504AC93345
File Size: 5.07 GB
File Name: macOS_High_Sierra_10_13_1_Official.iso
File Format: ISO

1. Download MacOS Unlocker 3.0.3 by paolo-projects in github which is a patch to remove restrictions for Mac OS X VM creation.
   https://github.com/paolo-projects/unlocker/releases/download/3.0.3/unlocker.zip
   By default VMWare doesn’t support Mac OS X VM but a patch created by DrDonk enables users to create a Mac OS VM in VMware Workstation, VMware Workstation Player and VMware Fusion or VMware ESXi/vSphere Hypervisor
2. Extract the unlocker-master.zip and run “win-install.cmd” as administrator. Remember to uninstall previous unlocker before installing a new version
3. Run VMWare Workstation and create a new virtual machine
4. Select “Custom (advanced)”
5. Set hardware as “Workstation 14.x”
6. Select “I will install the operating system later”
7. Select “Apple Mac OS X” as guest OS. The MacOS Unlocker patch enabled the Mac OS X support of VMWare Workstation. Select “macOS 10.13” as our OS version
8. Set your VM name and VM location. It is optimal to use an SSD as your VM location for best performance
9. Set number of processors to 1 and number of cores per processor to 8. I set these before to 2 processors and 2 cores and I was getting loop issues when I ran the VM.
10. Set your memory to 8GB. You can set the memory at least 2GB but if you encounter looping issues when starting the VM try to set it higher
11. Select “Use bridged networking” as your network connection. This option lets you connect to the network directly.
12. Set I/O controller type to “LSI Logic”
13. Set Virtual disk type to “SATA”
14. Select “Create a new virtual disk”
15. For disk capacity, set disk size to 40GB. Select “Allocate all disk space now” and “Store virtual disk as a single file”
16. Specify the disk filename. You can manually locate the disk folder. The default vmdk location is the VM folder location
17. Check VM settings and then click Finish
18. Wait for VMWare to create the virtual disk
19. Once the VM is created we need to enable virtualization engine in the VM settings. Open VM settings and select “Processors”. Enable “Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI” and “Virtualize CPU performance counters”
20. Go to “CD/DVD (SATA)”. Select “Use ISO image file:” and browse for the downloaded “macOS_High_Sierra_10_13_1_Official.iso”
21. We need to edit the vmx file and add a parameter. Locate your mac OS x vmx file which is located in the VM folder
22. Edit the vmx file and add this parameter at the end of the list:

    smc.version = "0"

    

23. Start your High Sierra VM and wait for the setup page
24. Select your preferred language
25. Select “Disk Utility”
26. In the “View” icon, enable “Show All Devices”. Verify if the “VMware Virtual SATA Hard Drive Media” exists
27. We need to format the said drive. Select “VMware Virtual SATA Hard Drive Media” and then “Erase”
28. Set Drive name, set format to “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” and scheme to “GUID Partition Map”. Select “Erase” and wait for the process to finish
29. Exit Disk Utility and Select “Install macOS”
30. Select “Agree” to the terms of the software license agreement
31. Select the previously created drive for the Mac OS X system drive and then select install
32. Wait for the High Sierra installation process to finish. The system restarts after the installation
33. Wait for High Sierra to finalize the installation
34. Once the installation is done you can already setup your Mac OS X High Sierra