On macOS 26, vmnet-helper can join a vmnet-broker network using the
--network option. VMs using vmnet-helper share the same subnet as VMs
using native vmnet, but use file-handle based packet forwarding instead
of native vmnet performance.
This is useful for VMs that don't support native vmnet (e.g. QEMU, libkrun) but need to communicate with VMs on the broker network.
vmnet-helper --network shared --fd 3
Or using vmnet-client:
vmnet-client --network shared -- vfkit --device virtio-net,fd=4 ...
For more info see the vmnet-helper architecture.
Note
This integration is not implemented yet.
To start a virtual machine using vfkit use the vmnet virtio-net device:
vfkit --device virtio-net,vmnet,network=shared ...
The virtual machine will use the "shared" builtin network. If you start multiple instances they will use the same network and can communicate.
For more info see crc-org/vfkit#439
Note
This integration is not implemented yet.
To start a cluster with the vfkit driver using the vmnet "shared" network:
minikube start --driver vfkit --network vmnet-shared ...
If running on older macOS version or vmnet-broker is not installed, minikube will fallback to using vmnet-helper.