What is QEMU on Mac?
By Junaid, maker of Taskglass · Last reviewed
A virtual machine emulator used by tools like UTM, the Android Emulator and Colima.
QEMU runs virtual machines and emulators. Apps such as UTM, the Android Emulator (from Android Studio), Colima and Lima use it. Its CPU and memory reflect the whole guest system running inside, and emulating a different processor type (for example x86 on Apple silicon) is especially demanding.
- Category
- Developer tools
- Made by
- QEMU project (open source)
- Safe to quit:
- With care
Shown in Activity Monitor as qemu-system-aarch64, qemu-system-x86_64
Why is QEMU using so much CPU or memory?
- A virtual machine or emulator doing work
- Emulating x86 on Apple silicon, which is slow and CPU-heavy
- Large memory assigned to the VM
What to do
- 1Check which app started it (UTM, Android Studio, Colima, etc.)
- 2Shut down the VM or emulator properly from that app
- 3Assign less memory or fewer CPUs in the VM settings
Safe to quit? With care.
Force quitting is like pulling the plug on that virtual machine; unsaved data inside it is lost.
Related processes
- Virtualization.framework VMA virtual machine run by Apple's Virtualization framework for apps like Docker, UTM or OrbStack.
- Docker DesktopDocker's app for running containers on a Mac inside a lightweight Linux virtual machine.
- kernel_taskThe core of macOS itself. It also holds busy apps back on purpose to stop your Mac overheating.
Part of the Taskglass Process Library