macOS

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UTM provides power users with access to Shortcuts intents and an AppleScript bridge interface paired with a command line interface. Note that not all features are currently supported in the automation interface and feedback is welcome on what should be added.

Shortcuts

UTM provides basic actions to the Shortcuts app which you can use to build a workflow. Currently, there exists actions to:

  • Find a virtual machine by keywords and/or its status
  • Start/stop/pause/resume/restart a virtual machine
  • Send keystrokes and mouse clicks to a running virtual machine

AppleScript

For more advanced automation, UTM provides an AppleScript interface. Details on the verbs and nouns available in the scripting interface can be found here or in the AppleScript dictionary. To browse the dictionary:

  1. Open “Script Editor” (found in Applications → Utilities)
  2. In the menu bar choose File → Open Dictionary… (or Shift+Cmd+O)
  3. Select UTM from the list of applications

Check out the cheat sheet for some examples of what you can do.

Command Line Interface

The CLI tool is a wrapper around the AppleScript interface and provides easy access to some of the functionality. It can be found at:

/Applications/UTM.app/Contents/MacOS/utmctl

It is recommended you “install” this by creating a symbolic link to your bin directory:

$ sudo ln -sf /Applications/UTM.app/Contents/MacOS/utmctl /usr/local/bin/utmctl

If you installed UTM to another directory, the symbolic link will not work properly. Instead, you need to add the directory containing utmctl to your PATH variable:

$ echo "/path/to/UTM.app/Contents/MacOS" | sudo tee /etc/paths.d/10-utm

Run the tool without any arguments to see the help documentation and a list of available commands.

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