# Lima v2.1.0-rc.1

- Product: Lima (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/lima)
- Vendor: Lima Project
- Date: 2026-03-15
- Version: v2.1.0-rc.1
- Original notes: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/releases/tag/v2.1.0-rc.1
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/lima/releases/v2.1.0-rc.1
- Labels: Pre-release; Platforms: macOS, Linux

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

---

- **added** — Support macOS guests with limactl start template:macos
- **added** — Support FreeBSD guests with limactl start template:freebsd
- **added** — Add limactl watch command
- **added** — Add limactl shell --sync to prevent AI agents from breaking the host files
- **added** — Add limactl (create|edit|start) --nested-virt as an alias for --set '.nestedVirtualization = true'
- **added** — Support nested virtualization in krunkit
- **added** — Add host-to-guest time synchronization
- **changed** — Guest home directory changed from /home/${USER}.linux to /home/${USER}.guest with old path symlinked for compatibility
- **changed** — Use QEMU by default for non-native architectures
- **changed** — Reduce guestagent binary footprint from 14M to 6.1M
- **changed** — Consolidate basedisk and diffdisk into a single disk file for efficiency
- **changed** — k3s template now supports creating multi-node clusters
- **added** — Restore debian-11 template

🎉 Highlights:
- Support [macOS guests](https://lima-vm.io/docs/usage/guests/macos/): `limactl start template:macos`
- Support [FreeBSD guests](https://lima-vm.io/docs/usage/guests/freebsd/): `limactl start template:freebsd`
- Add [`limactl shell --sync`](https://lima-vm.io/docs/examples/ai/#syncing-working-directory) to prevent AI agents from breaking the host files

##### Changes

- Guest OS support:
  - Experimentally support macOS guests (#4595)
  - Experimentally support FreeBSD guests (#4627)

- `limactl` CLI: 
  - Add `limactl watch` command (#4489, thanks to @IrvingMg)
  - Add `limactl shell --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'` (#4663)

- Guest home directory:
  - The guest home directory is changed from `/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 (#4725)

- krunkit:
  - Support nested virtualization (#4658, thanks to @abiosoft)

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

- Guestagent:
  - Reduce binary footprint (14M -> 6.1M) (#4120, #4536)

- Internal file structure:
  - `basedisk` and `diffdisk` are consolidated into a single `disk` file for efficiency (#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 (#4505, thanks to @afbjorklund)
  - Restore `debian-11` (#4574, thanks to @olamilekan000)

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

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


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

$ lima uname
Linux
```

- - -
The binaries were built automatically on GitHub Actions.
The build log is available for 90 days: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/actions/runs/23115903481

The sha256sum of the SHA256SUMS file itself is `90f5f673101d51e1f1b4c219d883a34b389cea5fb3f0d65b4b2944b96def4015` .
- - -
Release manager: @AkihiroSuda