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How to Try Omarchy Before Installing It

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Run the official Omarchy trial on a Mac or Windows PC, test the keyboard-first desktop, and decide what a virtual machine can tell you before a disk install.

An illustrated Omarchy desktop running inside a virtual machine window

You can explore Omarchy without selecting a disk in its installer. The official Omarchy site links trial apps for Mac and Windows that run the desktop in a virtual machine. That is enough to learn whether its tiling windows, shortcuts, and bundled tools suit you before you change partitions on a computer.

This guide follows the official Mac trial and Windows trial projects, checked on September 29, 2026. A virtual machine is useful for evaluating the workflow, but its graphics, peripherals, and boot behavior differ from a physical installation.

Pick the trial for your host computer

Your computer Official trial Check before starting
Apple Silicon Mac Try Omarchy for Mac The project targets Apple Silicon and provides a signed, notarized macOS app.
Windows 10 or 11 PC with an x86-64 processor Try Omarchy for Windows Hardware virtualization must be available and enabled.
Linux PC or another host No dedicated trial app is linked from the official homepage A general-purpose VM may be possible, but follow its own setup and Omarchy’s current ISO instructions.

Use the download or release links in the relevant official repository. The Windows project documents its installer and the virtualization prerequisites; the Mac project documents its app and QEMU-based virtual machine. These are separate host-specific projects, so do not assume the Mac app runs on an Intel Mac or that the Windows app runs on macOS.

Give the desktop a focused test

Once the virtual machine opens, spend a short session on the parts of Omarchy you will actually use:

  1. Press Super + Space to open the Omarchy menu. On a Mac keyboard, the app’s instructions explain how the host keyboard maps its modifier keys into the guest.
  2. Open a terminal with Super + Return and a browser with Super + Shift + Return. Move focus with Super + Arrow and a window to another workspace with Super + Shift + 2.
  3. Open Style → Theme from the menu. Change a built-in theme and cycle its backgrounds to see how much of the desktop follows the selection.
  4. Find Install → Package and search for an application you use. You can inspect the menu without committing to an AUR package.

The navigation, themes, and package manuals document those controls. If the keyboard-first workflow feels awkward after a few minutes, that is a more useful discovery than a benchmark number.

Understand what the virtual machine cannot prove

The Mac trial repository notes that video decoding is CPU-only, and a VM’s graphics path is different from direct access to a GPU. The Windows project likewise documents virtualization and display limitations. Judging video playback, gaming, multi-monitor scaling, battery life, suspend, Wi-Fi adapters, or fingerprint readers from the trial would therefore overstate what the result means for your computer.

The VM also does not test the most consequential installation steps: choosing the right physical disk, sharing space with Windows, entering the encryption password at boot, and recovering a bootloader. If you decide to install, read the Omarchy installation guide and the official getting-started manual before writing an ISO to USB. Keep a backup of the host machine’s files.

The Windows trial project says its virtual disk keeps changes between launches. Treat anything you save inside the trial as data to back up or export before resetting or removing the app; the virtual disk is not a substitute for a normal file backup.

Make the next decision

Keep the VM if you mainly want to learn the layout or occasionally use an Omarchy environment. Move to a physical install if the keyboard workflow fits and you need to evaluate the actual display and hardware. For a computer that must keep Windows, the official dual-boot guide explains the required unallocated space and encryption constraints. A successful VM session answers whether you like the desktop; the installation guide answers whether your disk plan is safe.

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