MacBook Air M5 – Bridged networking over Wi-Fi not working in VMware Fusion or Parallels (works on my M4 Max MBP)

Hi everyone,

I recently got a MacBook Air M5 and installed VMware Fusion to run a VM. When I try to use bridged networking with the Wi-Fi adapter, I get an error and it doesn’t work.

To rule out an OS issue, I completely reinstalled macOS, but the problem still persists.

I also installed Parallels Desktop to test, and I’m seeing the exact same behavior. Bridging the VM network to the Wi-Fi interface fails.

However, if I use the shared network / NAT option in either VMware Fusion or Parallels, everything works normally.

What’s interesting is that I also have a MacBook Pro 16" with an M4 Max, and on that machine I can use bridged networking to the Wi-Fi adapter without any issues using the same virtualization software.

So this seems to be something specific to the MacBook Air M5 (or its Wi-Fi interface).

Has anyone else run into this issue?

Is bridged networking over Wi-Fi currently unsupported on this model, or is there a workaround?

Thanks!