That said, in general, Tor Browser should be safe to use on a Mac. Including how you use Tor Browser and what kind of Mac you have. Can the government see what you do on Tor?.Does downloading Tor put you on a list?.

Unless your hypervisor is compromised (this has happened in the past, but it's rare), the VM itself will provide good protection from malware - for example Windows malware will have no effect on a Linux VM, and vice versa - and any malware that does infect your VM is contained by the sandbox that the VM provides - and you can simply reset it to return to a known-clean state, or throw it away and start again. Using a VM can help against fingerprinting because you can be running a different browser in a different OS in your VM than on your host system - but that instance itself can be tracked/fingerprinted, so it may be a good idea to rotate through a series of different configurations (or use a browser plugin that randomises some settings, such as reported browser version, OS, installed fonts, etc), and to throw away changes in your VM each time you use it, which will eliminate even the hardest of 'supercookies' that might try to track you.

A VPN is a good way to change that, and you can configure that either inside or outside the VM, though ideally you'd no want to be sharing an IP with your host system. Most hypervisors allow you to change how it obtains an IP address, but in typical configs it will only change on your local network, which is probably NATed behind a single address provided by your ISP. When you're hosting a VM on your local machine, it may share the same IP as your host, as far as the outside world is concerned.

How safe is tor browser in a vm