Apple announced its custom ARM-based M1 Mac mini and M1 MacBooks last year. Even though the MacBooks have impressed the masses in almost all of the scenarios, it has failed to perform on one front. The ARM-based Macs do not support running Windows 10 via Boot Camp.

Run Windows 10 on Apple M1 Mac

Now, thanks to an update to Parallels Desktop, you can finally install Windows 10 on your M1 Macs. Parallels Desktop has been updated to version 16.5 which brings full virtualization support to MacBooks running both Intel and Apple’s own M1 processors. You can now run the Windows apps on your M1 MacBooks, side by side with Mac or iOS apps on Big Sur.

There’s still a catch though. The version of Windows 10 the Parallels Desktop runs is Windows 10 on ARM, which in itself lacks support for a lot of Windows apps. Microsoft says that Windows 10 on ARM will soon be able to emulate x64 apps.

But even when the support comes, it will be your M1 Mac first emulating Windows operating system, and then that Windows 10 on ARM operating system emulating x64 apps. So don’t really expect the performance to be top-notch right away.

Corel says its latest update also results in some impressive performance and battery improvements overrunning the software on Intel-based Macs:

• M1 Mac running Parallels Desktop 16.5 and Windows 10 Arm consumes 2.5 times less energy than a 2020 Intel-based MacBook Air.
• M1 Mac running Parallels Desktop 16.5 and Windows 10 Arm performs 30% better in Geekbench 5 than a MacBookPro with Intel Core i9-8950HK in the same conditions.
• Apple M1’s integrated GPU appears to be 60% faster than AMD’s Radeon Pro 555X discrete graphics processor in DirectX 11 applications when running Windows using the Parallels Desktop 16.5.

Microsoft doesn’t license the ARM version of Windows 10 to users right now, so there’s no way of installing the stable build right now. Though you can install the Insider Preview version of Windows 10 on ARM on your M1 Mac which also brings support for emulating x64 apps.

You can download the Parallel Desktop to run Windows 10 on your M1 MacBook using this link.

Do you find this update useful? Have you been waiting to run Windows apps on your M1 Mac? Drop a comment and let us know!

Note: We may earn a commission for purchases from the links above, which helps us keep the site running.