Sub-millisecond snapshots
Take and restore a snapshot in well under a millisecond, no matter how large the disk has grown, because a snapshot is an APFS clone rather than a copy.
Why it matters
Every other desktop hypervisor makes you weigh whether a snapshot is worth the wait and the disk space. That hesitation is what stops people snapshotting before the risky thing, which is exactly when they needed one. When the operation is effectively free, the hesitation goes away and the habit forms.
What changes
Without it
- A snapshot copies or diffs the disk, so its cost scales with how big the machine has become.
- Restoring means waiting for a progress bar.
- You ration snapshots to save disk space, and skip them exactly when they matter.
With 1VMTool
- A snapshot is an APFS clone of the disk bundle — the filesystem shares the blocks instead of duplicating them.
- Take and restore complete in well under a millisecond on any disk size.
- Snapshot before anything risky, every time, because there is no reason not to.
How it works
The disk is a clonable file
Machine disks are laid out so that APFS can clone them whole, rather than as an opaque blob a hypervisor must interpret.
Cloning shares blocks
APFS copy-on-write means the clone and the original point at the same data until one of them is written to. Nothing is duplicated at snapshot time.
Restore swaps the clone back
Restoring points the machine at the snapshot's clone. There is no copy step, which is why the time does not grow with the disk.
What it covers
- Snapshot a running or stopped machine
- Restore to any snapshot in the tree
- Per-node unique data, so you can see what each snapshot actually costs
- Named safe points that survive across sessions
- Every operation available from both the app and the 1vm CLI
What you get out of it
- Experiment without planning an escape route first
- Reset a test environment between runs instead of cleaning it
- Keep a known-good state for every machine at almost no disk cost
Try it on your own Mac
Every screen states its limits before you commit to anything.