How can create a Windows 11 installation media on my Mac M3 device?

First, make sure the PC meets the requirements of Windows 11. If it is a eligible device, please download Windows 11 ISO from microsoft website: https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

Don't use third-party ISO as it might contain virus or malware. After that, prepare for a USB drive and follow this guide to create a Windows 11 installation media on your Mac:

https://www.uubyte.com/online-help/iso-editor.html

There is no problem to run ISO Editor app on Apple Silicon Mac according to my test. Finally, boot your PC from this USB and start installing Windows 11.

Hi Kycvincent,

Could you confirm this process works for the latest M3 chips? Is it safe as well?

I have a new MacBook M3 Pro 16 and would love to install windows on it.

Thanks a lot.

Are you familiar with text command? Actually, you can do it from Terminal app.

First, format the USB to FAT32 on your Mac in Disk Utility.

Second, download and mount the Windows 11 ISO.

After that, copy all files from Windows 11 ISO to the target USB drive expect the install.wim file.

Finally, split the install.wim file with wimlib. When the split is done, you will have a Windows 11 installation media.

If you're thinking about installing Windows 11 on your M3 MacBook Pro,

• You can't install the regular version of Windows 11 that is built for Intel/AMD processors. You must install the version that is built for ARM processors: Windows 11 for ARM.
• There is no support for Boot Camp, so you can only install Windows 11 for ARM inside a Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion virtual machine.
• Windows 11 for ARM can run some Windows/Intel applications using emulation/translation. There are some limitations, and there is associated overhead.

Microsoft Support – Options for using Windows 11 with Mac® computers with Apple® M1® and M2™ chips

Dunamis_xl wrote:

Hi Kycvincent,

Could you confirm this process works for the latest M3 chips? Is it safe as well?

I have a new MacBook M3 Pro 16 and would love to install windows on it.

Thanks a lot.

On Apple Silicon Macs, you can install Windows 11 for ARM in a virtual machine. Two vendors of virtual machine applications are Parallels and VMware.

https://www.parallels.com/

https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion.html

VMware offers free personal-use licenses for Fusion Player, but you will still have to pay Microsoft whatever they want for Windows 11.

Apple Silicon Macs do not support Boot Camp, and dual-booting Windows 11 for ARM is not an option.

Soleopard wrote:

Hi everyone,

I just switched from a long-time ThinkPad Windows laptop to a MacBook Pro with a M3 chip. Took a few days and managed to set up most of the things. However, I could not find a way create a Windows 11 installation media on my Mac. There are a lot of free tools available on Windows for making bootable USB. It seems the situation is much different on macOS.

In fact, a lot of folks recommended using the default bootcamp assistant app. However, I don't find the app in the Application folder.

Could someone shed some light on this? Really need some help to fix my wife's broken PC.

Thanks

Boot Camp is not supported on silicon Macs.

Do you have a Windows virtual machine on your Mac? This could be really helpful for creating Windows 11 bootable USB on Mac. There are many free tools you can use in Windows platform, like the official Windows 11 Media Creation Tool. However, it could be a time consuming process to create a Windows virtual machine on a Mac.

Stack Social site has Intel Windows 11 licenses on the cheap. Requires signing into a Microsoft account as part of the license purchase process so that the purchase will be recorded with Microsoft. Then one downloads the Windows 11 ISO directly from Microsoft which contains the various Intel Windows 11 and Windows 11 Pro installers.

What has already been said about requiring Windows 11 ARM and either of the mentioned virtual machine installations. VirtualBox is not available on ARM Macs.

Dunamis_xl wrote:

Hi Kycvincent,

Could you confirm this process works for the latest M3 chips? Is it safe as well?

I have a new MacBook M3 Pro 16 and would love to install windows on it.

Thanks a lot.

P.S. – You would not use the process that Kycvincent describes. He's talking about using an .ISO file of the Intel version of Windows to prepare a bootable USB flash drive installer for an Intel-based PC. He mentioned using a Windows virtual machine, but the rest of the instructions were not about the virtual machine. They assumed the virtual machine was already installed and running.

With Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, I believe that the applications themselves offer menus or buttons for downloading and installing Windows. You'd activate Windows afterwards.