What's new in Parallels Desktop 15 for Mac

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Ready for Catalina

Parallels Desktop 15 is ready for the highly anticipated macOS® Catalina, including Sidecar support. Support for additional Catalina features is currently in development and will be introduced around the upcoming public release of macOS 10.15. When you buy or upgrade to Parallels Desktop 15, you’ll be ready for these updates. Version 15 supports macOS Catalina 10.15 (when released), Mojave 10.14, High Sierra 10.13 and Sierra 10.12.

DirectX 11

Version 15 supports DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11—all via Apple Metal®.*  With the addition of DirectX 11, you can now run graphic-intensive applications and games, such as Autodesk 3ds Max 2020, Lumion, ArcGIS Pro, Master Series, FIFA 19, Age of Empires, Fallout 4 and more.  

*macOS Mojave is required; macOS Catalina (when released) is recommended for the best performance and required for some applications to run.

Email Files from Finder

Parallels Desktop 15 adds support to the Share menu in Finder—you can send files from macOS using a Windows email application. Just right-click a file in the Finder and select Share > Send with Windows Email App. The file will be sent by your default email client in Windows.  

Screenshot Preview to Windows

Drag and drop like never before. Apple® changed the way screenshots are done in Mojave and Catalina, and you may notice that you can’t use their previews in Windows applications. Parallels Desktop 15 now makes this possible—plus, it provides the ability to drag images right from Safari, Photos and other Mac applications.

Apple Pencil and Sidecar

Use Apple Pencil® in your favorite Windows applications with added tilt and eraser support. With Sidecar, you can use your iPad as a second display to extend your Windows applications.

Bluetooth

Parallels Desktop 15 supports an additional category of Bluetooth devices. Connect your Xbox One Controller, Logitech Craft keyboard, IRISPen, some IoT devices (such as smart home appliances and smart bands) and more. Additionally, support for Bluetooth Low Energy lets you play an Xbox game in a Windows 10 virtual machine.

Linux

A wide variety of Linux distributions are supported in virtual machines. New in Parallels Desktop 15: Bluetooth, digital rights management (DRM) support and more. (Recent versions of major Linux distributions, such as Fedora and Ubuntu, require DRM support for graphics.) Plus, version 15 provides a new video driver for Linux virtual machines that supports sliding mouse, dynamic resolution and multimonitor support out of the box (even without Parallels Tools).

Performance

Experience significant performance improvements in Parallels Desktop 15. Microsoft Office applications start up to 80% faster, and you’ll also see a faster and more responsive Parallels Desktop UI. Enjoy up to 15% faster 3D graphics improvements (best result is achieved on 3DMark13 Cloud Gate test with AMD Radeon graphics).

Parallels Desktop now features support for Apple Metal® API for improved graphics. As part of the move to Metal, Parallels Desktop 15 supports DirectX® 11, 10 and 9 on Metal, delivering best-ever performance.

 

 

 

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