UTM SE: Retro PC emulator

• Chip — $4.99
• Computer — $9.99
• Transistor — $0.99

Last verified 6 Aug 2026

3.8 543 ratings · App Store

1. 4/5It’s fast on my iPad Air 5 but on my iPad 8 it’s slow

   So basically UTM se stand for slow edition and I tested it on my iPad Air 5 and it can run windows 11 and Mac OS 10.6 smoothly but on older devices like iPad 8 it’s slow and laggy and crashes I was able to emulate windows 8 and Mac OS 9 and older the reason why I was saying my iPad Air 5 is faster because it has that hyper visor feature which allows to virtualize instead of emulation and it has the M1 chip and has 8gbs of ram and 256 gbs so if you have a older devices get a newer one I hope apple will allow jit ASAP and my iPad 8 has 3gbs of ram and 128 gbs so older devices are for nostalgia and new devices are for modern use so 4/5 stars

   Minecraft1222 · 6 Aug 2026

2. 3/5Nice Concept, Slow to Use

   I am excited for this project, but it still has a ways to go. It does work, but very slowly, at least on an iPad Pro 12.9 Gen 4. Very slow to boot and it is so slow I can’t even boot into the pre-built Linux GUIs. I created a fresh Linux VM without a GUI and while slow, it was easy to setup (took over 9+ hours to install Ubuntu Server). But even in terminal, I cannot log in because of the slowness. As of this writing, I’m logging in and after entering the password, it just sits there. I’m 10 minutes in and still haven’t gotten a prompt. Just a blinking cursor. So while this is a very interesting project, it still needs some work in the speed department. This may be faster on the latest and greatest, but I do not have that (except for the iPhone 15 Pro, which has way too small of a screen for me to test out, but I may amend this review if I do.) Developers, do keep up the good work, though. This is a very useful project for someone who would like to learn Linux, but wants the portability of a tablet. I’m thinking like a student. Also I like to note it is a battery hog. Because it is so slow, I have to keep it plugged in or the iPad would be drained.

   SdwHwk · 6 Aug 2026

3. 5/5Great app

   This is a great app. I’ve actually gotten into emulate MS-DOS, Windows (up to xp), macOS 9 and more! So it’s a B tier app in my opinion. It’s got its ups and downs, but it’s great. I can see how some people might have trouble using this app because I actually had a lot of trouble trying to get macOS 9 to even boot. but this is just the truth about emulation and virtualisation. It’s very complicated. It’s got a few things to work out but I see how the developers are trying their best to make this app even stay up on the App Store, so truly a great app it deserves five stars and a donation. PS, I hope Apple can allow JIT and the original UTM and not just the slow edition because if you didn’t know SE stands for slow edition.

   kiwi00456 · 6 Aug 2026

4. 3/5Very fun, broke after 3 months

   I downloaded the app in early October of 2024 after seeing it in a video and my first 2 months were fine I then started to see some issues (I use an iPad) mostly when I quit a VM it keeps loading then the whole app crashes then one day I woke up opened the app and my IPad froze I restarted it I tried opening it up again but same thing, it crashed my IPad it did not crash my system the 3rd time but I had at least 32 hours lost on there due to the VM’s files getting corrupted ( i had 4 VMs 2 react OS VMs and 2 Windows XP VMs) I deleted the app and haven’t redownload it again since. (I deleted the app in late December 2024)

   BranSharer · 6 Aug 2026

5. 3/5Pretty good! Needs better Magic Keyboard mouse support.

   Don’t expect super great performance with modern operating systems. This isn’t UTM’s fault, this is due to Apple’s dumb policies on how third-party apps can run (yet conveniently not theirs, oops). Long story short, I’d say Windows XP or a lightweight Linux distro is the upper limit of what you can do. That’s a ton of really fun possibilities! That being said, it would be great if there could be more robust Magic Keyboard support for the iPad version. Currently, the trackpad cannot control the cursor. If it’s supported, it should be easier to configure. It tends to crash when trying to leave a VM as well, regardless of RAM allocation or complexity of the VM. For context, I’m using an M4 iPad with the official Magic Keyboard. It’s so great to see this on the App Store. We’re another step closer to the iPad becoming a useful device because of this team!

   ldinino · 6 Aug 2026

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