Apple approves first PC emulator for iOS

Apple has approved the first PC emulator for iOS that allows people to run classic software and old-school games.

Apple approved ‘UTM SE’ after initially rejecting and banning it from being notarised for third-party app stores in the European Union (EU).

It can run run classic software and old-school games for Windows, Mac OS 9, and Linux on your iPhone.

“We are happy to announce that UTM SE is available (for free) on iOS and visionOS App Store (and coming soon to AltStore PAL),” the app posted on X.

“Shoutouts to AltStore team for their help and to Apple for reconsidering their policy,” it added.

You can’t do much with UTM SE out of the box. It doesn’t come with any operating systems, though the app does link to UTM’s site, which has guides for Windows XP through Windows 11 emulation, as well as downloads of pre-built virtual Linux machines.

UTM SE supports both VGA mode for graphics and terminal mode for text-only operating systems.

It emulates x86, PPC, and RISC-V architectures and run pre-built machines or “create your own configuration from scratch”.

The app is built from QEMU, a powerful and widely used emulator, and is now available for free for iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS.