The VMWare Tool should automatically show up.

Toggle “Connected” checkbox and click “Ok”.

Select “CD/DVD (SATA)” and select “Use ISO image file” then click “Browse” to locate the VMware Tool ISO.

Eject the MacOS Big Sur DVD then go to “VM” tab and select “Settings”.

After installation, the performance of the virtual machine is a bit slow so to improve the performance, we need to install the VMware Tools for macOS.

Wait for the installation to finish then complete the setup wizard.

Select “MacOS Big Sur” drive then click “Continue”.

Click “Agree” to the terms of the software license agreement.

Select “Install macOS Big Sur” and then click “Continue”.

Select the “Disk Utility” tab then click “Quit Disk Utility”.

Click “Done” after the erase process completes.

Input “MacOS Big Sur” for the name and select “APFS” for the format then click “Erase”.

Select “VMware Virtual SATA Hard Drive Media” and then click “Erase”.

Select “Disk Utility” and then click “Continue”.

After loading, select “English” as language then click the next arrow.

Add the following codes at the end of the file and save it.

Locate the VMX file, for this guide the VMX file was labelled “macOS 11.1.vmx”.

Select “New CD/DVD (SATA)” and choose “Use ISO Image file” and click “Browse” to locate the MacOS Big Sur ISO and then click “Close”.

Select “Processors” and set “Number of processors” and “Number of cores per processor” to “2” to get a “Total processor cores” of 4.

Select “Memory” and adjust the memory settings to “8” for a total of 8 GB or 8182 MB memory allocation.

Click “Customize Hardware…” to edit hardware settings then click “Next”.

Input the disk size to “120” and select “Store virtual disk as a single file” then select “Next”.Take note of the folder location because we need to edit the VMX file later.

For our guide we will input “macos 11.1” and select the desired folder location of the virtual machine then click “Next”.

Select “Apple Mac OS X” for the operating system and “macOS 11.1” for Big Sur and then click “Next”.

Select “I will install the operating system later” then click “Next”.

Create a new virtual machine in VMWare Workstation 16 and select “Typical (recommended)” then click “Next”.

Extract the contents of “unlocker-master.zip” and run “win-install.cmd” as administrator.

macOS Unlocker V3.0.3 for VMware Workstation.

Check link to download the latest ISO build.

A working Windows system with VMWare Workstation.

This guide will help you setup Big Sur in VMWare Workstation. VMWare Workstation natively does not support running MacOS as a virtual machine.

Install macos on vmware workstation 16