The Parallels team is fully prepared to ensure seamless compatibility with the recently released Mac computers with Apple M4 chip and will conduct comprehensive testing, releasing updates as needed to optimize performance and compatibility. Since the new Mac computers with Apple M4 chips have just been released, we will continue to do extensive testing and evaluations, both in our lab and with your help. Based on our experience and the Apple M4 advertisement, you can expect all essential features to function smoothly — likely with an added boost in performance. However, if you find an issue with Parallels Desktop that can be reproduced on a Mac with an Apple M4 chip, kindly share your experience on the Forum.
Migrate Parallels Desktop to a new Mac with Apple M4 chip
Migrating Parallels Desktop from one Mac to another can be a seamless process with the help of Apple's Migration Assistant. Once the migration is complete, you can activate Parallels Desktop on the new Mac as outlined in the Move a license section of KB 123461.
Alternatively, you can move the virtual machines manually, as outlined in KB 114118.
If you want to migrate Parallels Desktop from a Mac with an Intel processor to a new Mac with Apple M4 chip, you will need to create a new virtual machine (VM) on the new Mac and migrate data from the old VM to the newly created one. Learn more in KB 125344.
Known issues
| Issue | Solution | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | With Parallels Desktop AppStore Edition 1.9.4, a virtual machine downloaded via the Installation assistant doesn't start with the error message "Unable to start the virtual machine". | The issue was fixed in the update 1.10.0. Update Parallels Desktop AppStore Edition manually or enable automatic updates. |
| 2 | With Parallels Desktop 19 or below, a virtual machine downloaded via the Installation assistant doesn't start with the error message "Unable to start the virtual machine". | Install Parallels Desktop 20. Parallels Desktop 19 or below aren't officially supported for running on Mac computers with macOS 15 as the main system, and M4 Macs have macOS 15 preinstalled. Thus, you might experience some issues running your virtual machine's in previous versions of Parallels Desktop. |
| 3 | Linux virtual machines experience random crashes while installing. | Fixed in Parallels Desktop 20.1.3 (55743). Download |
| 4 | Running macOS Monterey virtual machine on M4 Mac | macOS Monterey virtual machines are unsupported on M4 Macs due to virtualization framework changes. |
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