Boot Camp (software)

Boot Camp is a multi-boot feature supported by Apple for their macOS operating system to assist users in installing, managing, and booting into Microsoft Windows on Intel-based Macintosh computers. The Boot Camp Assistant utility guides users through non-destructive disk partitioning, including resizing of an existing HFS+ or APFS partition, if necessary, of their hard disk drive or solid-state drive and installation of Windows device drivers for the Apple hardware. Boot Camp Assistant also handles the installation of a Windows Control Panel applet to control the selection of the default boot operating system. Initially an unsupported beta for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Boot Camp was introduced with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and has been included in subsequent versions of the operating system. Previous versions of Boot Camp supported Windows XP and Windows Vista. Boot Camp 4.0 for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard version 10.6.6 up to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion version 10.8.2 supported only Windows 7. With the release of Boot Camp 5.0 for Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion in version 10.8.3, only 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 are supported. Boot Camp 6.0 added support for 64-bit versions of Windows 10. Boot Camp 6.1, available on macOS 10.12 Sierra and later, only accepts new installations of Windows 7 and later. This requirement was upgraded to requiring Windows 10 for macOS 10.14 Mojave. Boot Camp is not supported on Apple silicon Macs, though it is possible to run ARM-based Windows 10 or Windows 11 via virtualization. As such, the application was removed in macOS 27 Golden Gate as that version of macOS only supports Apple silicon Macs.