vmnet-helper

A high-performance network proxy connecting virtual machines to the macOS vmnet network without running the VM process as root or requiring the com.apple.vm.networking entitlement.

On macOS 15 and earlier, the helper requires root only to start the vmnet interface, then immediately drops privileges and runs as the unprivileged user. On macOS 26 and later, root is not required at all.

Tip

On macOS 26 and later, consider using vmnet-broker for native vmnet networking — up to 9 times faster than vmnet-helper. vmnet-helper is the first VM tool to support vmnet-broker. See the architecture guide for details.

Installation

macOS 26 and later

Install using Homebrew:

brew tap nirs/vmnet-helper
brew install vmnet-helper

macOS 15 and earlier

To install the latest version run:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/nirs/vmnet-helper/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

You can download the install script for inspection and run it locally.

The install script downloads the latest release and installs it at /opt/vmnet-helper, and configures a sudoers rule to allow running vmnet-helper without a password. See sudoers.d for more info.

Note

Homebrew installation is not available for macOS 15 and earlier because vmnet-helper requires root privileges. Installing via Homebrew would allow malware to replace the executable and gain root access.

Documentation

• Integration guide
• Performance
• Examples
• Architecture
• Similar tools
• Development
• How to create a release

License

vmnet-helper is under the Apache 2.0 license