Parallels Desktop 19 Adds Password-Less Sign-In With Touch ID Support, macOS Sonoma Compatibility, and More

Parallels Desktop 19 for Mac has been released, bringing some notable new features and performance enhancements to the virtualization software, including password-less Sign-in with Touch ID Integration and full support for Apple's forthcoming macOS Sonoma operating system.

Screenshot 2023 08 22 at 11
Touch ID on Macs lets users authenticate logins and Apple Pay transactions with their fingerprint, and beginning with Parallels Desktop 19, users with a secure Windows login and password can now use Touch ID to sign in to Windows virtual machines, simplifying the login process.

Parallels Desktop 19 also brings optimized compatibility with macOS Sonoma, including re-engineered Shared Printing via Internet Printing protocol (IPP) that supports printing from Windows apps, with minimal setup required.

In addition, DP 19 promises a richer experience using VMs on Apple silicon Macs, thanks to dynamic resolution adjustments and familiar multitouch gestures with Trackpad support. Meanwhile, Pro Edition users can remotely access a macOS Sonoma 14 VM via port forwarding, which is useful for VMs hosted on Amazon EC2 Mac cloud instances.

The Parallels Desktop software has also been given a design overhaul, with a new app icon and a refreshed UI that aims to make navigation simpler, along with native dialogs for easier interaction with the app.

Windows touch id PD 19
There are several other improvements highlighted in the release notes for Parallels Desktop 19, including:

  • Improved OpenGL support, up to version 4.1, for running more CAD software on Mac, including VariCAD, Deswik.CAD, Vectorworks Vision 2023, and more.
  • Improved performance for AcrGIS Pro, a map designing application.
  • Compatible to run CentOS 9 Stream on Mac computers with Apple silicon, along with an updated set of ready-to-go Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 22.04.2, Fedora 38, Debian 12, and more.
  • New option to create Arm-based Linux VM on Mac computers with Apple silicon using Rosetta to run x86-64 binaries, including containers.
  • Enhanced support for the HashiCorp’s Packer and Vagrant with macOS VM on Apple silicon.
  • New option to create, group, and manage Parallels VMs and their containers from the Visual Studio Code extension.
  • Support for enrolling Windows in Windows management solutions, such as Microsoft Intune and others, when deploying it using Parallels My Account Configuration Profile or as a shared file.

Parallels Desktop 19 for Mac Standard, Pro, and Business editions can be purchased or upgraded to at parallels.com/desktop or from authorized resellers. For more information, including the option to download a free trial, see the Parallels website.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Parallels. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Popular Stories

AirPods Pro Firmware Feature

Apple Releases Firmware Updates for AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4

Monday November 11, 2024 11:28 am PST by
Apple today released firmware updates for both AirPods 4 models (version number 7B20) and the AirPods Pro 2 with both Lightning and USB-C charging cases (version number 7B21). All of these AirPods models were previously on firmware version 7B19. It is not immediately clear what new features or changes are included in firmware versions 7B20 and 7B21, but we will update this story if we find...
New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

18 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Wednesday November 13, 2024 2:09 am PST by
Apple is set to release iOS 18.2 next month, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. There are a handful of new non-AI related feature controls incoming as well....
iPhone SE 4 Thumb 1

iPhone SE 4 Camera Modules to Enter Mass Production Next Month

Tuesday November 12, 2024 2:56 am PST by
Apple's camera module supplier for the upcoming iPhone SE 4 is set to begin mass production of the components in December, according to a new report coming out of Korea. Economic newspaper Ajunews reports that LG Innotek will supply the front camera module for the budget-friendly fourth-generation device. Final tests are now said to be underway, with mass production of the module following...
iphone 6 thickness

iPhone 17 'Air' May Not Be Much Thinner Than iPhone 6

Monday November 11, 2024 5:18 am PST by
Next year's iPhone 17 "Air" model may not be as thin as Apple planned, according to a rumor originating in Korea. According to the news aggregator account "yeux1122" on Naver, citing industry sources, Apple has run into problems making the new iPhone 17 model sufficiently thin. The device's reduced thickness is apparently dependent on manufacturing a battery with a thinner substrate, but...
new mac holiday

The Best Early Black Friday Mac Deals

Monday November 11, 2024 7:45 am PST by
Black Friday is getting closer, and prices on MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac mini computers have started to drop as the shopping holiday nears. These deals include the latest models of the M4 MacBook Pro and iMac. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with some of these vendors. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site...
iOS 18

Here's Everything New in iOS 18.2 Beta 3

Monday November 11, 2024 4:53 pm PST by
Apple seeded the third betas of iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 to developers for testing today. While the third betas of each update are minor relative to the first two betas, there are still a handful of changes across the Photos app, TV app, and more. A corresponding iOS 18.2 public beta with these changes will likely be released later this week, and Apple previously confirmed that the software...
General Final Cut Pro Feature

Apple Likely to Announce Final Cut Pro Update This Week With These New Features

Sunday November 10, 2024 12:13 pm PST by
In its announcement video for the new Mac mini last month, Apple teased an "upcoming" version of Final Cut Pro for the Mac. Apple will likely announce the update during the annual Final Cut Pro Creative Summit, which begins this Wednesday. The conference is held in association with Apple, and attendees will be visiting Apple Park on the first day. Apple already teased four new features...
iPad iOS 16 WP Display Feature eric edit

Apple to Launch AI-Powered Home 'Command Center' as Soon as March 2025

Tuesday November 12, 2024 1:09 pm PST by
Apple is planning to launch an AI-powered smart home display as soon as March 2025, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The display will measure in at approximately six inches, and while it is similar to an iPad, it is square rather than rectangular and it has thick bezels around the edges. There is a camera at the top front so that it can be used for FaceTime, plus there are internal speakers...

Top Rated Comments

Kevrani Avatar
16 months ago
When VMWare Fusion is free and the 2023 preview is REALLY easy to install and has DirectX 11 on ARM, it's a hard sell for Parallels.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Sir Ruben Avatar
16 months ago
I quite liked Parallels but was really put off by their pricing/upgrade model.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DaveFlash Avatar
16 months ago

It’s a company with the Russian roots. The founder is from Russia, and all the development was in Russia for many years.
also incorrect, it always was a US company, but at one time had R&D facilities in Russia, these days it's a part of Corel which is Canadian.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
HobeSoundDarryl Avatar
16 months ago
Since ARM Windows is far from full Windows, another option for about Parallels annual rate times 5 or 8 is to buy an actual PC. That kind of budget can buy a surprisingly robust Mac Mini-like PC that will then run anything that runs on Windows, not just some things that run in Windows ARM. That's what I did: "old fashioned bootcamp."

I also chose a 5K2K monitor with more than one video input so that both Mac and PC can share the same monitor without switching cables. Monitor has built-in hub so that both can share the same keyboard and mouse too. Monitor is an ultra-wide so- if desired- I can split screen to have both Mac and PC on the same screen at the same time. That "feels" very much like Parallels, minus the annual fee.

A modest Mac budget will buy a LOT of PC power and PC key upgrades like RAM and SSD have lots of competition driving down prices and margins so that most of the money one might spend on either is actually buying RAM and SSD... instead of deepening the cash pool in another vault.

Windows 11 is not nearly as bad as Mac fans spin. And all that stuff that we wish Windows emulation could do fully works on an actual PC. Bonus: since PCs are focused on Power instead of PPW, some things that lean on raw power get done faster on PC. So now I just parse out computing tasks accordingly. Some stuff I used to do on Mac now gets done on PC.

"Think different" works well this way for me. Perhaps for some of you too?
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sirozha Avatar
16 months ago
I love Parallels and have used it for 15 years now. One knock against them is that this is a Russian company likely cooperating with the FSB just like Kasperski. They can’t not cooperate, so it’s anyone’s guess what Parallels siphons off the Mac and the VMs. Unfortunately, VMware Fusion is so much behind that it’s no longer a competition.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
antibolo Avatar
16 months ago
Re: "Boot Camp"

What you have to understand is that running Windows natively on a Intel Mac was trivial because an Intel Mac was really just a PC with an Apple firmware. Apple didn't have anything else to do than make an assistant to setup dual booting, and write a few drivers for Apple-specific peripherals (for Windows XP they also needed BIOS emulation, but later Windows supports EFI booting so that's no longer needed, Windows 7 and above can boot 100% natively).

The ARM architecture doesn't work like that, any given vendor's system is very different because there's no equivalent to the PC standard in the ARM world, so the OS needs to be specifically customized to run on a given system.

ARM Windows can be virtualized on a ARM Mac because the VM can reproduce an ARM machine that Windows already supports. To run natively, Windows would need to specifically support Macs.

Unless Apple actively cooperates with Microsoft to make ARM Windows compatible with Macs, you'll never see Windows running natively on a ARM Mac.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)