Orka Desktop lets you generate or procure personalized macOS images directly on your device. Whether for individual usage or seamless collaboration within your team, you can count on familiar workflow, versioning, and audit and review controls.
It is aimed at iOS/macOS Developers, DevOps Engineers, IT Admins, students, hobbyists, technologists, and others.
Orka Desktop is the ultimate tool for seamless macOS virtualization. Tailored to meet the needs of iOS/macOS developers, testers, support engineers, IT admins, and DevOps engineers, this solution simplifies the creation, management, and sharing of virtual machines, whether it's done locally or through cloud-based platforms.
Orka Desktop is optimized to run at almost the same speed as a native Apple Silicon setup, with virtualization overhead as low as 5% in most cases. It utilizes an Open Container Initiative-compliant specification (OCI) to package and compress macOS images, resulting in notable reductions in image sizes. This innovation significantly eases the process of transporting these images.
Orka Desktop provides users with two methods for creating a new VM: The Clean Install option allows the creation of an image from an existing IPSW file, while the Pull Image option enables the retrieval of an image from an Image Repository. Additionally, users have the flexibility to directly obtain the latest IPSW from Apple's servers.
Key Features of Orka Desktop
Create and configure macOS VMs on your local machine.
A user-friendly GUI for managing VMs.
Seamlessly update and save your VMs as OCI Images with new OS versions or custom software.
Share Images with colleagues:
Push your updated OCI Images to a registry for easy sharing.
Colleagues can pull OCI Images from the registry to their local environments.
Use Cases and Benefits:
For Developers, Testers, and Support Engineers:
Streamline your development workflow with local virtualization.
Enable the transition from local development to cloud deployment.
Test and debug applications in isolated environments.
For DevOps Engineers:
Test images for CI pipelines before rolling into production.
Enhance collaboration by sharing VMs easily.
For IT Admins:
Test your MDM profiles on ephemeral VMs that can be easily recycled.
Evaluate new OS versions without needing more hardware.
Editor's Note:
There is a comprehensive guide to help you begin using Orka Desktop, available here. Within the guide, you will find steps for creating, updating, and sharing VMs.
Apple Silicon M1 with 8GB RAM or better and 50+ GB available disk space required
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