With no doubt, VirtualBox is perhaps the most popular tool for running macOS Virtual Machine. The problem is, running macOS on VirtualBox comes with its fair share of challenges and bottlenecks. This is often the case if the VirtualBox does not enjoy full CPU support or does not use a graphics card. Consequently, the whole endeavor becomes slow, making it difficult to run operations seamlessly. Fortunately, all these challenges can be diffused by installing a Guest Tool for VirtualBox. The new release of VirtualBox 6.0 which supports a Guest Tool comes with a new VMSVGA feature that automatically emulates a VMSVGA graphics card. With it, you can improve the performance of your macOS and enjoy more processing power.

If you are not aware of what a guest tool is, it is a pack of utilities which enriches the performance of a VirtualBox operating system to improve and streamline its operation. To be specific, it improves mouse performance, enhances graphics operations, and also increases the display and resolution capacity of your macOS by up to 16:9 and 1920x1080 pixels, respectively. So, how can you leverage this revolutionary technology to enjoy a better and smoother macOS? Well, in this tutorial, you are going to learn all that. Have a look!

1. Enable VMSVGA in VirtualBox

Run your VirtualBox, and once the program is up, select the macOS you want to use. After that, click on “Edit” to make changes. This will open a “Display tab”. On it, select VMSVGA then click “Ok” to validate your selections.

Change Graphics Controller to VMSVGA

2. Mount VM Tool to Mac Virtual Machine

With your VirtualBox running, select the VirtualBox menu. Once open, select “Device” then click on “Optical Drive”. Proceed and click on “Choose disk image” . Finally, Open your VM Tool.iso file.
VM Tool: Download

Open VM Tool ISO file

3. Install VM Tool in macOS

After you have downloaded the VMware tool, you just need to select “Install VMware Tool” and the guest tool will get installed.

Install VM Tool

Give it five to ten minutes after which you should get a notification about “System extension”. After you get that, select the “Open Security Preferences” option.

Open Security Preferences

After you get that, select the “Open Security Preferences” option. Click on “Security and privacy” then select “Allow” so that the guest tool can complete its installation process.

Click Allow button to install VM Tool

After ten to twenty minutes, you should get a notification saying that the installation is complete. To complete the installation process, click the “Restart” button so that changes can take effect.

Restart your Virtual Machine

4. Enable System Extension

After restarting the Virtual box, you might a notification saying “System Extension Blocked”. Don’t panic since this is normal. To overcome this, open the “Security Preferences menu” to activate it. The final step is confirming that your virtual box is working well with the guest tool. To do this, head to “macOS” about. If the integration is okay, you should see “Display 128 MB”. If you can’t see this, the installation was not successful. However, you always have the chance of reinstalling the VMware tool.

Enable System Extension

5. Enable Full-Screen Mode

This is as easy as any other step above. Open Terminal in the macOS and put these commands to activate the full-screen display.
# Sudo /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Tools/vmware-resolutionset <height> <width>
With <height> and <width> represents your screen’s resolution.

Change macOS VirtualBox Resolution with Terminal

macOS VirtualBox with 128 MB Display


If you are looking for a way to spice up how your macOS runs on VirtualBox, Guest Tool by VM if with no doubt the idealist and most effective add-on to employ. With it, you improve not only performance but also the display capacity of your macOS.