v2.1.0

[AkihiroSuda]

🎉 Highlights:

• 🍎 Support macOS guests: limactl start template:macos
• 👿 Support FreeBSD guests: limactl start template:freebsd
• 🔄 Add limactl shell --sync to prevent AI agents from breaking the host files

Changes

• Guest OS support:

  • Experimentally support macOS guests (Support macOS guests #4595)
  • Experimentally support FreeBSD guests (Support FreeBSD guests #4627)

• limactl CLI:

  • Add limactl watch command (Add limactl watch command and JSON events for test scripts #4489, thanks to @IrvingMg)
  • Add limactl shell --sync to prevent AI agents from breaking the host files (Feature(cli): Add --sync to prevent AI agents from breaking the host files #4429, thanks to @unsuman)
  • Add limactl (create|edit|start) --nested-virt as an alias for --set '.nestedVirtualization = true' (editflags: add --nested-virt; vz: reject nested-virt for macOS guests with a better error #4663)

• Guest home directory:

  • The guest home directory is changed from /home/${USER}.linux to /home/${USER}.guest (Rename /home/${USER}.linux to /home/${USER}.guest #4578).
    For compatibility, the old path is symlinked to the new one.

• QEMU:

  • Use QEMU by default for non-native architectures (vmType: default to QEMU for non-native architectures #4725)

• krunkit:

  • Support nested virtualization (krunkit: enable support for nested virtualization #4658, thanks to @abiosoft)

• Hostagent:

  • Add host-to-guest time synchronization (hostagent: add host-to-guest time synchronization #4527, thanks to @mfenderov)

• Guestagent:

  • Reduce binary footprint (14M -> 6.1M) (guestagent: k8s: use kubectl instead of client-go #4120, go.mod: drop dependency on k8s.io/api #4536)

• Internal file structure:

  • basedisk and diffdisk are consolidated into a single disk file for efficiency (Introduce stable disk/iso filenames with symlink-based migration #4587, thanks to @jandubois).
    No impact is expected for end users.
    An instance created with Lima v2.0 or v1.x should continue to boot with Lima v2.1 (but not vice versa).

• Templates:

  • k3s: support creating multi-node clusters (Add url and token params for kubernetes templates #4505, thanks to @afbjorklund)
  • Restore debian-11 (restore templates/debian-11.yaml #4574, thanks to @olamilekan000)
  • Add homebrew-macos (templates: add homebrew-macos #4737)
  • Add experimental/fedora-rawhide (templates: add experimental/fedora-rawhide #4738)

• Project:

  • MAINTAINERS: promote Norio Nomura (@norio-nomura) to a Committer (MAINTAINERS: promote Norio Nomura (norio-nomura) to a Committer #4511)

Full changes: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/milestone/62?closed=1
Thanks to @Harry-kp @IrvingMg @TatsuyaHayashino @abiosoft @afbjorklund @alexandear @arixmkii @bmwiedemann @hekki @jandubois @majiayu000 @mfenderov @ningmingxiao @norio-nomura @olamilekan000 @qeinstein @tharunn0 @tushar1977 @unsuman @xvchris

Usage

$ limactl create
$ limactl start
...
INFO[0029] READY. Run `lima` to open the shell.

$ lima uname
Linux

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The binaries were built automatically on GitHub Actions.
The build log is available for 90 days: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/actions/runs/23181461567

The sha256sum of the SHA256SUMS file itself is 2298d66eb040f2793187371f5920a6bce44740a8099b25b8d0ec05a02cf7f1e0 .

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Release manager: @AkihiroSuda

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This discussion was created from the release v2.1.0.

[AkihiroSuda]

CNCF blog post by @unsuman
https://www.cncf.io/blog/2026/03/25/lima-v2-1-macos-guests-and-enhanced-ai-agent-safety/