How to disable keyboard layout synchronisation between Mac and Windows virtual machine.

113 users found this article helpful

Question

Whenever I switch keyboard layout in macOS, it also switches it in Windows, and vise versa. How can I turn it off?

Information

In order to disable keyboard layout synchronization, you need to manually modify config.pvs file.

  1. Shut down your virtual machine (Actions > Shut down). If it is in a suspended state, resume it and then shut down.

  2. Right-click Parallels Desktop icon > Control Center.

  3. Right-click the name of your virtual machine > Show in Finder.

  4. Right-click the .pvm file > Show Package Contents.

  5. Right-click the config.pvs file > Open With > TextEdit.app.

  6. In TextEdit, press Cmd+F shortcut and locate the following part:

    <KeyboardLayoutSync dyn_lists="">
    <Enabled>1</Enabled>

    And change 1 to 0. It should look like this:

    <KeyboardLayoutSync dyn_lists="">
    <Enabled>0</Enabled>

Save the changes in config.pvs file and close it. Run the virtual machine. Now, keyboard layouts are not synchronized and will not be changed automatically.

Was this article helpful?

Tell us how we can improve it.