utmapp
Acrylic doesn’t display on Windows 11 VM
Describe the issue
I have a Windows 11 VM. Ever since I first set it up, windows appeared with sharp, pointy corners rather than the round ones expected. Furthermore, I have since discovered that the “Mica/Acrylic” translucency effect does not display anywhere; all surfaces are opaque, including the area behind the window tabs in the File Explorer in the below screenshot. Furthermore, the About page in System Settings says that I have no GPU and no VRAM, even though correct details are displayed in dxdiag.exe. I have tried updating the drivers in my VM, to no avail.
Configuration
- UTM Version: 4.7.4 (115)
- macOS Version: 26.0.1
- Mac Chip: M4
Debug log
VM configuration file
This has to do with the fact that QEMU (the underlying layer for UTM) does not yet have compatible 3D Acceleration drivers for Windows 11 ARM64. Other programs like VMware Fusion and the ridiculously expensive Parallels Desktop have custom drivers, though in my testing, they are incompatible with UTM even after installing their guest tools manually.
If you must have the rounded corners and mica, you can enable them manually via registry tweaks, though this will not fix the lack of 3D acceleration. To do this, open the "Registry Editor" application and go to the following address:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Dwm
From here, right-click and create a new "Dword (32-bit value)" and name it "ForceEffectMode" before setting it to "2" and closing the Registry editor. After a restart, you should see the mica effects and rounded corners. Hope this helps!
