You can also set it up to automatically boot your virtual device in this mode. You can enable this mode either from the Parallels menu or the added blue button in the window’s title bar.

Your virtual taskbar completely disappears, and Windows apps can mingle freely with their Mac counterparts. The final and most impressive view in our Parallels Desktop review is called Coherence. It minimizes the virtual OS window but still keeps it active, so you can check what’s going on while working on other things. PiP mode is useful for monitoring ongoing Windows processes. Window mode shows the guest-OS apps in a resizable window, and macOS apps can be run alongside those from your virtual operating system. Once Parallels for Mac reviews and sets up your Windows virtual desktop, you have four ways of interacting with it: It’s even possible to connect Bluetooth devices, such as the Xbox Elite controller, which work on both operating systems. You can also pull your Windows installation from a Boot Camp partition if you made one earlier.Īny portable devices, such as external hard drives, USB-powered sound cards, and keyboards, can be connected through USB, USB-C, Thunderbolt, or FireWire ports, and Parallels software will display them on both your Mac and Windows desktops. This allows you to export the data directly to your Parallels app or put it on an external drive. Parallels makes creating a Windows environment on a Mac easy: After downloading and installing the app, you can either use an OS image, be directed to a Windows installer (if you have a license), or simply buy a copy of Windows directly from Microsoft.Īlternatively, you can let Parallels for Mac review the contents of your Windows installation by installing a system export utility on your Windows PC.

There is also a veritable mountain of additional goodies, from the handy Toolbox to file-sharing and synchronization features. For starters, you can run operating systems other than Windows on it. It’s also much more than that, at least according to Parallels reviews. Parallels 17 is the latest version of virtualization software that allows Mac users to access their favorite Windows apps through a virtual machine with a Windows operating system.

Parallels pro edition worth it