Parallels Desktop introduced a bundled suite of Mac utilities called Parallels Toolbox last year. This year there’s a Windows version as well. Some tools that stood out included Airplane Mode, Clean Drive, and Find Duplicates. Parallels Toolbox for Mac and Windows 30+ tools in a lightweight, powerful, all-in-one application for Mac ® and PC. Easy to use and economical—a whole suite of tools for a fraction of the cost of individual apps, packaged in one simple interface.
- Faster to launch and use
- Touch Bar ready for Windows apps
- Requires less hard drive space
- No DirectX 13 support for games
Parallels is still the best way to run Windows on a Mac simultaneously and the latest version of Parallels 14 has just been released.
Parallels allows you to conveniently run all those Windows only applications and games that don’t run on Mac.
Here we’ve taken a first look at the new macOS Mojave ready version of Parallels.
In a nutshell, here’s what’s new and what we like in Parallels 14.
- The biggest improvement we’ve noticed with Parallels 14 is speed. One of our biggest gripes with Parallels has always been the amount of time it takes to open but Parallels 14 launches Windows noticeably faster. Parallels claims it opens “four times faster” than Parallels 13 and while it doesn’t quite feel that fast, it’s a big improvement. While using Windows, it also feels a bit snappier than before with less lag when using big apps or games.
- Parallels takes up less space on your hard drive than previous versions. It now takes up to around 20GB less space which is a significant saving. However, this mainly applies to Windows 10 installs – the savings for other versions of Windows are a lot less.
- Parallels 14 is optimized for macOS Mojave. Parallels usually release a new version with every new version of macOS and it’s guaranteed to work with Mojave. Mojave hasn’t been released quite yet but you can test the Public Beta version of Mojave in Parallels if you want to give it a spin.
- Touch Bar support has been enhanced from the previous version. There are now pre-configured Touch Bar shortcuts for Windows software like OneNote and Quicken and you can still customize Touch Bar controls for any app you like.
- If you use a drawing tablet with your Mac, you can now use Microsoft Ink with pressure sensitive support to edit Windows Office documents on Mac. This works with Windows apps such as PowerPoint, CorelDRAW and Photoshop.
Some of the other highlights worth mentioning include:
- Dark mode can be used in Windows applications
- The new enhanced Quick Look and Screenshot features can be used in Windows
- Camera Continuity imports pictures from iOS 12 into Windows
- Graphics Support has been improved for OpenGL
- Unused virtual video memory is now used by macOS for smoother and faster operation when running Parallels
- 4K video cameras are now supported for video conferencing
There are also specific improvements to Parallels Desktop Business edition the most notable being automatic Smart Card reader availability in macOS and Windows.
On the downside:
- There’s still no support for DirectX 13 that would allow users to play games like FIFA on Mac.
- Many of the biggest 3D performance improvements are only for the latest iMac Pros so won’t be of much use to the vast majority of Mac users that have iMacs and MacBooks. This will mainly benefit those that use graphics heavy 3D modelling apps such as CAD applications on Mac.
Parallels 13 For Mac Reviews Reddit
Parallels pricing remains that same as before depending on which version you need.
As an incentive, Parallels are also offering Parallels Toolbox for free with new purchases of Parallels 14.
Parallels Desktop For Windows
You can also try a free trial of Parallels 14 to test it for yourself.
Parallels Desktop 12
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