Purchased Parallels Desktop 12 recently? Don’t worry—just check out our Tech Guarantee to see if you qualify. If you bought or registered Parallels Desktop 12 on or after August 1, 2017 you can upgrade for free. What are you waiting for? Choose your version of Parallels Desktop 13 for Mac right here, right now. When you're ready to download the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you'll find that Parallels Desktop 12 supports the new Windows Ink feature within the Windows versions of Word, PowerPoint and OneNote. Hi everyone, With Parallels 11, I was able to set an option in the configuration so that parallels would use one of the Mac desktops. This would allow me to switch between Mac OS/Desktop full screen and Windows 10/Desktop full screen using CTRL 1-3. Parallels Desktop, the industry-leading software for running Windows applications on a Mac, now includes a new version of the software for developers, designers, and power users: Parallels Desktop for Mac. Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac Customers Who Purchased Aug. 11 Offered Complementary Upgrade to One-Year Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition Subscription. Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac Standard Edition (perpetual license) customers, who purchased the software between its Aug. 18 th launch and Nov. 11, 2016 to create virtual machines (VMs) with more than 8 GB of vRAM and 4 vCPUs, can. Existing users running Parallels Desktop 10 and 11 can upgrade to Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac, Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro Edition and Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition can upgrade today.
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Desktop 12
See it
Mac users are fortunate to have not one, but two excellent commercial virtualization software packages to choose from, not to mention less-polished free alternatives like Virtual Box. In what has now become an annual ritual, VMware and Parallels have updated their respective Fusion and Desktop products to coincide with the recent release of macOS Sierra.
Last year, both companies delivered ambitious new versions to capitalize on back-to-back debuts of Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan, but the 2016 editions are somewhat more subdued by comparison. VMware marked the occasion by launching Fusion 8.5, a maintenance update with no new features.
Having celebrated its tenth anniversary for Desktop earlier this year, Parallels encouraged engineers to come up with at least one unique new feature to justify the upgrade to version 12, although the company’s usual relentless innovation produced a mixed bag this time around.
Open the Toolbox
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Ironically, the marquee feature of Parallels Desktop 12 ($100 one-year Pro Edition or Business Edition subscription; $80 Standard Edition one-time purchase; $40 Student Edition one-time purchase) isn’t part of the core software at all, but a bundled standalone application called Parallels Toolbox (sold separately for $10) which is installed via Preferences. Toolbox consolidates 20 common, everyday tasks into a single menu bar window, making them easier to find and use.
These tools offer one-click simplicity for downloading or converting video, recording audio, muting the microphone, or performing system tasks such as locking the screen, hiding the desktop, preventing your Mac from going to sleep, and Do Not Disturb, which temporarily pauses notifications and Dock activity. Convenient? Yes, but none of the utilities are particularly special or unique, and power users are likely to have their own alternatives already installed.
Others are grouped into categories, providing functionality for taking screenshots, screen recording, archiving files, or managing time. I found the stopwatch, alarm, timer, and date countdown in the latter group particularly handy, since I typically defer such tasks to my iPhone or Apple Watch. Toolbox strictly works on the host OS—it has nothing to do with enhancing Mac, Windows, or Linux virtual machines.
One unfortunate side effect of Toolbox is that you’ll now have three separate Parallels icons taking up space on the menu bar: one for Toolbox, another for Desktop (when it’s actually running, of course), and a third for Parallels Access, the company’s $20 per year remote access service (included with annual Desktop subscriptions). There’s clearly room for some consolidation here, and the individual tools also add icon clutter to Launchpad, but at least they can be organized into a single folder there.
Always ready
If you spend an equal amount of time in Windows and macOS, Parallels Desktop 12 offers a number of welcome enhancements. Performance has been boosted across the board, with 25 percent faster access to shared folders and snapshots, and noticeably speedier suspend and resume—under five seconds on my 27-inch iMac Retina 5K.
VMs can now be configured to launch automatically when your Mac starts up, leaving them paused in the background while idle to avoid consuming valuable CPU time. (Remarkably, this continues to work even after quitting Desktop.) Located under Startup and Shutdown in the Options tab, “always ready in background” is accompanied by a handful of custom settings that determine how VMs behave when launched, closed, or shut down.
One of my biggest Windows 10 pet peeves is the heavy-handed approach to automatic updates. I don’t use Windows daily, so it every time I launch Parallels Desktop, performance is degraded as updates start installing in the background. The new Maintenance option allows such tasks to be blocked until the scheduled time, such as a weekend when my iMac isn’t in use. (VMs must be open at the time.) PD12 includes one year of free online storage (500GB) from Acronis, which can be used to back up your virtual machines.
Desktop 12 also makes using Windows on the Mac more seamless. Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents in Safari can be configured to open in their respective desktop Office 365 applications, and passwords entered in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge can now be saved in your Mac keychain.
Last but not least, Parallels offers independent screen resolutions for multiple displays. In full-screen mode, my iMac runs Retina Display resolution, while the adjacent 27-inch Thunderbolt Display works as an extended 2560 x 1440 desktop, each in their own Space. (Sadly, there are no independent settings for backgrounds.)
There is at least one area where Desktop 12 takes a step back. Contextual menu shortcuts have been inexplicably removed from Control Center, which I always found quite handy for quickly reclaiming storage from my Windows VMs without having to open the Configure window.
Bottom line
If you already have an annual subscription, installing Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac is a no-brainer. Although the new Toolbox utilities aren’t compelling enough on their own to justify $50 for a perpetual license upgrade, the performance improvements and macOS Sierra support certainly are.
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Desktop 12
See itPros
- 20 bundled Toolbox utilities for one-click common Mac tasks
- Big performance gains
- Always ready in background option for faster launch times
- Schedule Windows 10 maintenance, software updates
Cons
- Toolbox adds third Parallels menu bar icon
- No more contextual menu in Control Center
- Promised macOS Sierra Storage Optimization support missing
Parallels Desktop for Mac 14 has been unveiled. The popular cross-platform solution that lets you run Windows 10 on your Mac features support for Apple’s upcoming macOS Mojave update and includes storage and performance enhancements, and more.
The primary focus of this year’s Parallels Desktop for Mac release is on enhanced storage optimization. This year’s version is between 20 percent and 30 percent smaller than earlier releases. This will allow you to save as much as 20GB of disk space.
Performance improvements, meanwhile, include:
- Up to 200 percent performance improvement on the iMac Pro (audio and video encoding, AI, 3D modeling, cryptography and other complex math calculations workloads)
- Up to 80 percent faster application launch
- Up to 10 percent faster boot time
- Up to 30 percent faster suspend operation on APFS partition
- Up to 130 percent more frames per second in Shared Camera
- Up to 17 percent more frames per second in Coherence view mode
Also, for the first time, Apple TouchBar support has arrived for the following popular Windows apps: Microsoft Visio and OneNote, SketchUp, AutoCAD, Revit, Quicken, QuickBooks and Visual Studio. They join other apps that picked up TouchBar support in previous years including Office 2016 (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook), Windows Start Menu and desktop (Cortana, Task View and Task Bar pinned elements), File Explorer (File Open and Save As settings), and web browsers (Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Vivaldi).
In announcing Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac, Jack Zubarev, Parallels president explains:
Millions of Parallels Desktop customers highly value performance and efficiency. With Parallels Desktop 14, we’ve taken those to the next level by focusing on graphics and storage, allowing customers to save as much as 20 GB of disk space while enjoying the best-ever performance. Personal productivity enhancements include more Windows features available on Mac devices. Touch Bar support for Windows applications—such as OneNote or Quicken—enables customers to add their favorite applications to the Mac Touch Bar so their shortcuts are at their fingertips.
You can download a copy of Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac online. Current version 12 and 13 users can upgrade to the latest version for $49.99. New users can buy the software for $99.99 or sign up for a $79.99 per-year subscription. Parallels Desktop 14 Pro Edition and Business Edition are both priced at $99.99 per year.
For testing purposes, you can download free trials of both Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac and Windows 10.