In recognition of World Backup Day, this post shows you how best to back up the Windows installation on your Mac in Parallels® Desktop. 

Yes, you really should back up! 

A few years ago, I had a Windows installation on my iMac that would no longer boot. In addition, I could not copy the Parallels Desktop file that contained this Windows installation (the “.pvm” file). This quickly led to the conclusion that at least a portion of the hard drive on my iMac had failed. The Apple Tech Support team I contacted was great, but nothing we tried fixed the issue, so Apple authorized a no-cost-to-me hard drive replacement. I was able to backup everything on the disk, except the Parallels Desktop file that contained Windows. If I had made a backup earlier before the drive failed, I would have lost very little. 

This blog post is my attempt to help you avoid the data loss I had. 

But I Have Time Machine (or iCloud Drive), So I Don’t Need to Do This, Right? 

I run Time Machine also, and it is great, and it has saved me on a number of occasions. However, Time Machine is not a good choice to backup Windows on your Mac. Time Machine works by checking every hour for files that have changed on your Mac, and then backs them up. Anytime you start up or use Windows on your Mac, the .pvm file will change. The change might be really small, but Time Machine cannot see that. So, Time Machine backs up the entire .pvm file, which is usually more than 10GB, and can be hundreds of GBs. If this gigantic file is backed up once every hour, you will quickly fill up the Time Machine drive. For the same reason, backing up Windows to iCloud Drive is a bad idea. 

What You Need 

The steps below will work for any version of Windows. (Or, for that matter, any version of Linux, macOS, or any other OS that you have installed in Parallels Desktop on your Mac.) All you need is a high-capacity, speedy external drive attached to your Mac. For my home setup, I have a 10TB, external USB drive which I purchased new for about $175 USD. You will need to have this external drive connected to your Mac, and it should be visible on the Mac desktop. 

Only 3 Steps Needed to Back Up Windows in Parallels Desktop 

1. Shut down Windows 

2. Reclaim any extra space 

3. Manually copy the .pvm file to the external drive 

Notes: 

1. You must really shut down Windows. Not suspend Windows, not just close the Parallels Desktop window where Windows is running, but manually shut down Windows. Step 2 requires that Windows has shut down. 

2. The file that Parallels Desktop stores Windows, all your Windows applications, your Windows configuration setting, and (perhaps) any files you have created in Windows is called a Mac .pvm file. (Figure 1 shows all my .pvm files, though you may only have one .pvm file.) These pvm files grow as you install new Windows apps and create new files. Usually, but not always, these pvm files shrink when you delete apps and files. However, over time there can be some “empty” space that remains in the file. You should remove this by using the “Reclaim…” button shown in Figure 2. In that figure, this “empty” space is over 40GB, so it is definitely worth reclaiming this before you go on to the next step. 

3. Just manually copy this pvm file to the external drive. For me, copying a 120GB pvm file to my external drive takes about 9 minutes. 

I recommend that you also add a recurring item to your calendar, reminding you to back up Windows. You can do this once or twice a month, depending on how much work you are willing to lose in case of hardware failure, or other problems. 

Restoring Windows From a Backup 

Suppose calamity strikes, and you have to restore your backup of Windows. No problem! Just copy the backup pvm file back to the same folder on your Mac where it was located when you backed it up. You will lose whatever work you have done since you made the backup, but this will usually be a lot smaller loss than if you had never backed up at all. 

I hope this helps you evade the big data loss that I experienced when my hard drive failed. Let us know your experience and tips in the Forums or on Facebook and Twitter channels. 

The post Tips for Backing up Windows in Parallels Desktop for Mac appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Parallels® Desktop for Mac is a fantastic way to run Power BI on M1 and Intel-based Mac computers. That said, because Microsoft has not yet released an official Power BI desktop for Mac, users must use Windows virtualization to run it.

Parallels Desktop for Mac supports Windows 11 on both M1 and Intel-based Mac computers, and delivers superior performance and compatibility with favorite Windows programs.

How well will Power BI run on an M1 Mac?

Before launching Parallels Desktop for Mac for M1 Macs we had more than 100,000 users test programs such as Power BI to confirm that it indeed does work on an M1 laptop. Mac applications that are originally created for Intel-based Mac computers work on Mac computers with Apple M1 chip out of the box by utilizing the Rosetta framework – a translation process that enables running Intel x86_64 applications on Apple M1 chip.  

Which version of Mac works best with Power BI?

Most users report that a minimum of 8 GB of RAM should be assigned to process data sets. We recommend Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro or Business editions since you can assign up to 128 GB of RAM to your setup.

Click here to download a 14-day free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac Pro edition and try it for yourself!

The post How Do I Run Power BI on a Mac? appeared first on Parallels Blog.

This post is part of a series to assist new users of Parallels Desktop. 

Virtual machines for Parallels Desktop on your Mac can be pretty large. Even a basic install of Windows 10 with Office for Windows will take up more than 21GBs on your Mac’s internal drive. Now, if you use that VM every day, that is not an unreasonable storage commitment. But what about that macOS Mojave VM that you use to keep some old 32-bit Mac apps available? While those old apps are important, you only use them a couple of times a month. Is that worth the 40GBs on your Mac’s internal drive? What can you do? 

Can you keep infrequently used VMs in iCloud? This is probably not a great choice for two reasons: (1) a VM stored in iCloud will run really slowly, and (2) you will have to pay Apple around $1-$3 every month for this storage. 

A better solution is to store these infrequently used VMs on an external drive, and to connect the drive to your Mac whenever you want to use these VMs. In this blog post I will explain the various factors involved in running VMs on external drives so that you can make the best choice for your needs. 

The factors are: 

How to get your VM onto an external drive 

You should create your VMs on the internal drive of the Mac, and then move them to your external drive, as creating a VM directly on the external drive will take a lot longer. Just follow these steps: 

1. Create the VM on the internal drive of the Mac. 

2. Delete the VM from the Control Center, but make sure not to move the VM to the trash. Keep the Files. (Figure 1) 

3. Move the VM to your external drive. 

4. Add the VM now on the external drive to the Control Center. You will see some warning alerts when you run it. (Figure 2) 

When you are finished, the new VM will now have a special icon badge in the Control Center indicating that it is on an external drive. (Figure 3) 

Will a VM on an external drive run as fast? 

As long as you have a good external drive with a fast connection to your Mac, it will run as fast as it would on your internal drive. The one area where it may be slower is disk access. So, if the Windows app you are running in the VM on the externally-stored drive is performing many “reads and writes” to the disk, then it will be probably slow. 

I took some performance benchmarks of the same VM on the internal drive of my iMac, and then on two different external drives. I used UserBenchmark for these tests, and the results are shown in Table 1. The only area where there was a significant speed difference was in disk access. 

User Benchmark Results for the VM stored in three different places: 

What I do 

My best, and thus my favorite, external drive is a 1TB SSD2GO PKT MK2. It is physically small, and really fast. I also use a 1TB Samsung Portable SSD T5, and a 1TB Western Digital My Passport SSD. These are all excellent external drives for Parallels Desktop users. 

Parallels Desktop provides flexibility for where you store your VMs so that you can pick the one (or two or three) that most closely align with your needs. 

Let us know in the comments if you put some of your VMs on an external drive. 

Download a free trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac for 14 days.

The post New to Parallels Desktop? Can you use a VM on an external drive? appeared first on Parallels Blog.

With Parallels Desktop on your Mac, you can effectively have two or more virtual machines running on your computer. So, where should you store the documents you create or work on? In the Mac’s Documents folder? In the Documents folder in Windows 10? Someplace else?

There are several choices, and each choice has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. In this blog post, I will explain each choice in some detail, so that you may make the best decision for your needs.

The choices are:

Store inside the Windows virtual machine

This is a popular and natural place to store documents created in the Windows virtual machine, especially for documents that may only be opened by a Windows application. For a person who is experienced using Windows, this can be done almost without thought.

Store on the Mac

Keep your documents in the Documents folder on the Mac, as you have always done. When you need to view or edit these documents with a Windows application, just drag & drop them into the virtual machine.

Store in a cloud service

The straight-forward way: Install the cloud service software on your Mac and in the VM. Unfortunately, this could have a significant negative effect on the storage required on your Mac. Most cloud services store a local copy of your files, and keep these files synched with a copy in the cloud. (Yes, I know that the most recent versions enable you to have some control of the local copies.) If you install the cloud service in both the Mac and the VM, then you will have two copies of your files on the Mac: one copy on the Mac, and a second copy in the VM. Both these copies take up space on your Mac. If you have lots of file in the cloud, this can have a significant effect on the space on your Mac.

The Parallels Desktop way: Because of this storage issue, several years ago Parallels Desktop added features to share the local copies between your Mac and your VM. Figure 1 shows how to enable these features, and Figure 2 shows these features working.

(iCloud) When you first set up you Mac, the macOS installation process will suggest you store all your documents in iCloud. (BTW, this is not a good choice for a Parallels Desktop user.)

Store in a Shared Folder

Parallels Desktop has a setting to make a Mac folder shareable with Windows. This Parallels Desktop feature was designed to make document storage natural and easy for Parallels Desktop users.

What I do

I described four options in this article, for storing documents. However, they are not mutually exclusive alternatives. Personally, I use a combination of these, each one chosen to meet a particular set of needs. If I don’t need to share a document with anyone else, then I might store it on the Mac, or in the VM. If I need to share the document with others, then I will use the cloud service that they are using. If I don’t need to share, but do need access both on the Mac and from Windows, then a Shared Folder is the best choice. If I will mostly be using the Mac to author or edit a document, but I need to use Windows for one particular edit (or the reverse), then I will drag the document to Windows for this one edit, then drag it back for the remainder of my work.

Parallels Desktop provides all choices so that you may pick the one (or two or three) that most closely align with your needs.

Let us know in the comments where you (mostly) store your documents and if you haven’t installed Parallels Desktop yet, feel free to download a 14 day trial.

The post New to Parallels Desktop? Where to store your documents? appeared first on Parallels Blog.

The system requirements and supported guest operation systems (OSes) for Parallels Desktop 16 for Mac are fully detailed below. We encourage every potential or existing user to explore the requirements prior to downloading or purchasing Parallels® Desktop. Users may be pleasantly surprised at the incredible performance of Windows, Linux, and other popular OSes on their Mac with Parallels Desktop. 

Supported Apple Mac hardware configurations:

Check your Mac hardware to ensure you can run Parallels Desktop without experiencing compatibility issues. Our team would love to make sure every user gets the most out of Parallels Desktop and the virtual machines (VMs) they create. 

Important Note: Internet connection is required for product activation, updates and select future features.

Supported guest operating systems that can be created as Parallels Desktop virtual machines

Mac with Apple M1 chip
Only ARM versions of operating systems are supported.

• Windows 10 on ARM Insider Preview
  Windows on ARM can run most of the regular Windows x86 applications. You can download the Parallels Desktop trial and install the application you need. If it doesn’t work, let us know at Parallels Forum.
• Ubuntu 20.10, 20.04
• Fedora Workstation 33-1.2
• Debian GNU/Linux 10.7
• Kali Linux 2021.1

Mac with Intel processors

• Windows 10
• Windows 8.1
• Windows 8
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2012 R2
• Windows 7 (SP0-SP1)
• Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP0-SP2)
• Windows Vista Home, Business, Ultimate and Enterprise (SP0-SP2)
• Windows Server 2003 R2 (SP0-SP2)
• Windows XP (SP0-SP3)
• Windows 2000 Professional SP4
• Windows 2000 Server SP4
• Boot2Docker
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8, 7 and 6
• CentOS Linux 8, 7 and 6
• Fedora Linux 32, 31, 30 and 29
• Ubuntu 20.04, 19.04, 18.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS
• Debian GNU/Linux 9 and 8
• Debian GNU/Linux 19
• SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
• openSUSE Linux 15.1 and 15
• Linux Mint 20, 19 and 18
• Kali 2019 and 2018
• Elementary OS 5.0
• Manjaro 18
• Mageia 7 and 6
• Gentoo Linux **
• Solaris 11 and 10 **
• openBSD 6 **
• FreeBSD 12 and 11 **
• openVZ 7
• eComStation 2 and 1.2 **
• ReactOS 0.4 **
• Android OS*
• macOS Big Sur 11.0 (when released)
• macOS Catalina 10.15
• macOS Mojave 10.14.x
• macOS High Sierra 10.13.x
• macOS Sierra 10.12.x
• OS X El Capitan 10.11.x
• OS X Yosemite 10.10.x
• OS X Mavericks 10.9.x
• OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.x
• OS X Lion 10.7.x
• OS X Lion Server 10.7.x
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6.x
• Mac OS X Leopard Server 10.5.x
• and many more…***

*Only the version downloaded with the Parallels Desktop Installation Assistant

**Parallels Tools are not available for this operating system

Note: Parallels Desktop emulates PC hardware, so operating systems that are not present in this list can work as well. We encourage users to download a free 14-day trial of Parallels Desktop first to install the OS of your choice. If it doesn’t work and you believe it should be supported, let us know at Parallels Forum.

Parallels Tools for Linux requires X Window System version 1.15-1.20 and Linux Kernel version 2.6.29-5.1.

Moving your PC?

Below are the Windows PC system requirements to move a PC to your Mac and use it as a Parallels Desktop VM (using Parallels Transporter Agent):

• 700 MHz (or higher) x86 or x64 processor (Intel or AMD)
• 256 MB of RAM
• 50 MB of available hard disk space for installation of Parallels Transporter Agent
• Ethernet or WiFi network adapter for migrating over network
• External USB drive for migrating via external disk
• Supported Windows: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000*

*To migrate Windows Vista or older, Transporter Agent from Parallels Desktop 13 should be used.

We sincerely hope this resource helps you navigate your experience with Parallels Desktop. Since 2006, Parallels has delivered excellence by being the #1 choice of Mac users to run Windows on Mac without rebooting. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help. The Parallels support team can be contacted on Facebook or Twitter, 24/7. 

The post Parallels Desktop 16 System Requirements and Supported Guest Operating Systems appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Since the advent of macOS Catalina, Apple users can use their iPad as a second computer screen for their Mac with the feature sidecar. This opens up completely new application areas and makes mobile computing flexible like never before. Anyone on the road with a MacBook and an iPad can use two screens to work productively. 

Combined with Parallels Desktop 15, an iPad becomes a second screen not only for a Mac itself but for all Windows programs running on it. What users need to have to make this happen is a fairly recent Mac along with an equally recent iPad running iOS 13.

An iPad acting as a second screen

With the new feature included in macOS Catalina “Sidecar”, the iPad display can either mirror or extend the Mac desktop. Mirroring helps when a user wants to demonstrate or present something. In all other cases, extending the display is the more suitable option. 

Another benefit of Sidecar is that it allows the MacBook Pro Touch Bar to be displayed on the iPad. This helps when operating the MacBook while it is closed (using its mouse and keyboard) if you still want to access the Touch Bar. 

An iPad is quite a small display screen, of course, even when compared to a MacBook’s own display. Sidecar may be best suited to display a single application’s program window in full-screen mode on the iPad. You can simply move your Windows virtual machine (VM) to the iPad and continue to work with your Mac as usual. To do this, hover over the green dot in the screen’s upper-left corner and select “Move to iPad.” 

Sidecar offers a further advantage of enabling Apple Pencil to act as a data entry device for Mac devices. And that’s not all—thanks to Parallels Desktop, Windows programs can also make use of the Apple Pencil for accurate line-drawing and handwritten annotation. This allows an iPad to be used not only as a display but also as a drawing tablet for Windows programs such as CorelDRAW or Microsoft Sketchpad. Notes can be added directly to screenshots, making commenting more direct than ever.  

Learn more about all the features in Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition and test them for 14 days for free!

The next issue of this series about using macOS Catalina in a corporate environment will focus on enhanced graphics performance for macOS and Windows.

Learn more:

• Apple Support | Using iPad with Sidecar
• Apple Support | Sidecar system requirements
• Parallels and Sidecar | Parallels Desktop 15 for macOS Catalina
• Parallels Desktop Business Edition | Free Trial

The post How to Use Parallels Desktop with Sidecar: Windows on iPad appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Parallels Desktop ^TM for Mac Business Edition enables end users to connect or mount physical disks to a virtual machine (VM) and treat them as internal disks.

Why connect external physical disks to VMs?

The advantages of being able to connect external physical disks to VMs include:

• Increasing the storage of your VM
• Installing Windows or another operating system (OS) to the disk
• Boot to an OS installed on that disk
• Use non-native Boot Camp installations on the connected disk

Without a solution like Parallels Desktop Business Edition, a Mac user will not be able to connect an external hard disk to a VM, if storage devices (in general) are not allowed.

Sometimes you cannot use specific USB devices in your VM. There might be cases when plugging in a USB device causes problems—for example, when the connected USB:

• Does not appear in the list of USB devices
• Disconnects automatically from the VM
• Behaves erratically in a VM
• Is not detected by the computer

Using Parallels Desktop Business Edition, you can easily connect hard disks to VMs.

How do you connect hard disks to VMs in Parallels Desktop Business Edition?

To connect a hard disk to a new VM:

1.Connect the external disk to the Mac via USB.
Note: Make sure to select Customize settings before installation when creating a new virtual machine.

2. In the virtual machine configuration window, select Hardware, select the Add button and then select Hard Disk.

3. Select Physical Disk under the Type menu and select the hard disk that you want to connect to the VM from the Location menu. Select OK.

After you connect the hard disk to the VM, the physical disk appears in the VM configuration.

To use the existing data of the disk, leave it as is. When the VM boots, this disk appears next to other VM disks.

To boot the VM from this disk, select Boot Order. Use the Up arrow and move this newly added disk to the top of the Boot Order list.

To connect hard disk to an existing VM:

1.Connect the external disk to the Mac via USB.

2. Shut down your virtual machine by selecting the Parallels icon in the macOS menu and choose Actions > Shut Down.

Note: If the VM is suspended or paused, resume it before shutting it down.

3. Select the Parallels icon in the macOS menu and choose Configure. The virtual machine configuration opens. Select Hardware, select the Add button and then select Hard Disk.

4. Select Physical Disk under Type menu and select the hard disk that you want to connect to the VM from the Location menu. Select OK.

Move up to Parallels Desktop Business Edition today

Parallels Desktop Business Edition offers features such as license management, mass deployment of Parallels Desktop and VMs, corporate compliance capabilities and business-level support.

Download the free trial and find out how it can benefit your organization.

For additional information on connecting external disks to a VM, see the following references:

• Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition Administrator’s Guide  

• Parallels Desktop User’s Guide  

• How to Add a Hard Disk to an ESXi Virtual Machine  

• Increase Storage by Adding New Virtual Drives  

• Connecting External Hard Drive to VM Software 

The post How to Connect External Physical Disks to a Virtual Machine in Parallels Desktop Business Edition appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Dedication: The clipboard is the unifying concept behind cut, copy, and paste. The individual responsible for cut, copy, and paste, Larry Tesler, passed away this month. Larry wrote the preface to my book, Object-Oriented Programming for the Macintosh, and was the person who hired me at Apple so many, many years ago. The computing world lost an important pioneer, and this blog post is dedicated to his memory. You can read more about Larry in The New York Times and the Washington Post.

When it was first released in 1984, one of the defining features of the Macintosh user interface was the clipboard. The clipboard was great! You could copy any kind of data to it and then later paste that data into a new location. You could put text, graphics and entire documents or folders on the clipboard. Later on, you could put video clips, equations, spreadsheets and more on it. While the Mac was not the first computer with a clipboard—the Apple Lisa also had one—the Mac made the clipboard a widely known user interface (UI) concept.

There were, however, a couple of issues with the Mac clipboard. First, it only stored one piece of information at a time. Copy something else to the clipboard, and whatever was there before got removed. Second, it was invisible. The only way you could see what was on the clipboard was to paste the clipboard’s contents into a document. Lastly, the clipboard worked great on a single Mac, but there wasn’t any way to get the clipboard information to another Mac. Over the years, a variety of apps and extensions have tried to solve these issues, but none really caught on because none were as simple to use as the clipboard itself.

The Parallels engineers decided to solve these issues—the result is the new Clipboard History tool in Parallels® Toolbox for Mac. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use this new tool. If you’re like me, you’ll find it so useful that you’ll set it to start up whenever you turn on your Mac.

The Clipboard History tool is one of forty tools in Parallels Toolbox for Mac (see Figure 1).

When running, it has a separate icon in the Mac menu bar—and when it’s open, its window shows you items that have been placed on the clipboard. (Figure 2)

Video 1 (3 minutes) introduces the Clipboard History tool and shows its use on a single Mac:

Video 2 (1 minute 30 seconds) shows how Apple’s Handoff works with the Clipboard History tool on two Mac devices.

Even though there is no Parallels Toolbox for the iPad, the Clipboard History tool can work with an iPad on the same network as your Mac. Video 3 (1 minute 30 seconds) shows an example of this:

I hope these examples show you the power of Parallels Toolbox. If you’re a subscriber of a recent version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, Parallels Toolbox is available to you at no charge. If you don’t have Parallels Desktop, you can download a free 7-day trial of Parallels Toolbox.

The post The Clipboard History Tool – Parallels Toolbox for Mac appeared first on Parallels Blog.

Almost all users who purchase a subscription for Parallels Desktop do so with one goal in mind: to install Windows on Mac. Parallels Desktop Mac Business Edition will help you and your employees easily work with Windows programs on Mac, running even the most demanding applications effortlessly. 

Before proceeding, you should have already signed up for Parallels My Account. In this article, you’ll learn how to how to install and activate Parallels Desktop. Only then can you install Windows on Mac. 

How do you install Windows on Mac?

Installing Windows on Mac is a crucial step to being able to run Windows applications on a macOS® device. To be able to do this, you first need to install a Windows virtualization tool on your Mac computer, such as Parallels Desktop. Parallels Desktop is not only perfectly compatible with any Windows program—it’s also fast, secure, and designed for rapid mass deployments.

How to install Parallels Desktop 

1. Download the Parallels Desktop installer to your Mac.
2. Double-click the .dmg installation file to mount it in Finder, then double-click Install.
3. Read through the Software License Agreement and click Accept.
4. Once prompted, enter your local Mac user password to finalize the installation.

Next, you’ll activate Parallels Desktop Business Edition.

How to activate Parallels Desktop Business Edition

1. Start Parallels Desktop by double-clicking the icon. 
2. If the first screen that opens is the Installation Assistant, Skip it for now. The Installation Assistant helps you install Windows—you can run this at a later time. 
3. Go to the Parallels Desktop dropdown menu, and then click Account & License.

4. This opens the Sign-in dialog box.

5. Click on the Business Edition button at the lower-left corner, which opens the Enter Business Key dialog. This then prompts you to enter your Parallels Desktop Business Edition license key. After entering it, click Activate.                                

6. If your activation was successful, you’ll see a confirmation message.

And just like that, your Parallels Desktop Business Edition is installed, activated and ready for Windows installation!

Read “How to Install Windows 10 in Parallels Desktop for Mac” for the complete instructions on how to install Windows on Mac.

Experience how easy it is to install Windows on Mac

With Parallels Desktop Business Edition, you can install Windows on Mac across your organization without breaking a sweat. Try it out yourself. Download the free trial now.

References:

• Parallels Desktop Business Edition Quick Start Guide: Read more
• Parallels Desktop for Mac Business Edition product page: Read more
• How to Install Windows on Mac blog: Read more
• Install Windows on your Mac using Parallels Desktop: Read more
• Does Windows come with my purchase of Parallels Desktop for Mac? Read more

The post How to Activate Parallels Desktop and Install Windows on Mac appeared first on Parallels Blog.

The feature Sidecar was first introduced in macOS Catalina and is also available now in macOS Big Sur.

Sidecar enables you to use an iPad as a secondary screen on your Mac. With Parallels Desktop® for Mac and Sidecar, you can even run Windows Apps on your iPad. Figure 1 shows a midway step in moving a small window to the iPad screen.

Before Sidecar was released, I had been using a Sidecar-like feature (Luna Display). I thought the idea of a small, secondary display for my iMac would be useful, but I vastly underestimated how useful it turned out to be. Because I could put status dialogs (“Now downloading. 58 minutes remaining.”) on the iPad, I did much less window management on my big screen and got more work done. I got used to this extra screen space really quickly—so much so that I really miss that small display when I’m travelling.

So while Parallels Desktop was being developed, we made sure Sidecar worked well with both the main VM windows, with Picture-in-Picture views of a running VM, with the Control Center and with the configuration dialogs and preference windows of Parallels Desktop. And because you can mix Mac applications with Windows applications when in Coherence mode, we tested that, too.

Setting Up Sidecar

To use Sidecar, you need the following:

• Mac running macOS Catalina or macOS Big Sur
• iPad running iPadOS (iPadOS 13.1 or later is highly recommended)
• The Mac and the iPad have to be on the same wireless network

When you have all this, the new Sidecar System Preference will enable you to start up Sidecar, as seen near the beginning of Video 1.

Using Sidecar and Windows apps with Parallels Desktop

There are many ways you can use Sidecar with Parallels Desktop. Put the VM configuration window on the small display; put the Control Center window on the small display; put some Mac windows on the small display when you use your VM in Full Screen view mode; and many others.

One of the more interesting is to move your Windows 10 VM to Sidecar and then enable Tablet Mode in Windows 10, as shown in Figure 1.

Let us know in the comments about your experiences with Sidecar and other macOS features.

Try Parallels Desktop for free for 14 days!

The post How to use Sidecar with Parallels Desktop for Mac appeared first on Parallels Blog.