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• Both Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMWare Fusion are available for download with a free trial and are reasonably priced. However, Innotek released a free open source ' virtualization ' program called VirtualBox that makes it possible to run Windows and other operating systems 'inside' or 'alongside' MacOS X in much the same way as Desktop for.
• The most popular Mac alternative is VirtualBox, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked 41 alternatives to Parallels Desktop and 15 are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. 273 People Used.

Mac client for Parallels Access Parallels Access allows you to remotely access Mac and Windows applications on your Windows Phone. This means you can use applications such as Office, iWork, Photoshop and even Internet Explorer on your mobile device.

Alternatives to BootCamp? Submitted 3 years ago by justmorrow. Depending on the requirements don't forget about Crossover which is a Wine port that would be like a native app on your Mac. VMs like parallels you don't notice a slowdown if it's an older game. Virtualbox is free and comparable to parallels. I've never used it tho. Parallels Desktop 10 is a hardware and operating system virtualization program designed for the users of Mac Operating System to enjoy the most of the versions of Windows operating systems in their machine.

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Mac users are fortunate to have not one, but two excellent commercial virtualization software packages to choose from, not to mention less-polished free alternatives like Virtual Box. In what has now become an annual ritual, VMware and Parallels have updated their respective Fusion and Desktop products to coincide with the recent release of macOS Sierra.

There are numerous of alternatives to Parallels Toolbox: CleanMyPc, CleanMyMac, Snagit for Windows, Capto, SwitchResX.But what are the cons and pros? New versions of Parallels® Toolbox have just been released (Parallels Toolbox for Mac 2.5 and Parallels Toolbox for Windows 1.5), and they contain both new tools and new functionality of existing tools. Haralds said: Try UTM, a wrapper for Qemu. It is somewhat less sophisticated than Parallels, but free. I much prefer Parallels Desktop, but I also use it for work. Their feature set and ease of use plus graphics performance is much superior for Windows 10 ARM to Qemu.

Last year, both companies delivered ambitious new versions to capitalize on back-to-back debuts of Windows 10 and OS X El Capitan, but the 2016 editions are somewhat more subdued by comparison. VMware marked the occasion by launching Fusion 8.5, a maintenance update with no new features.

Having celebrated its tenth anniversary for Desktop earlier this year, Parallels encouraged engineers to come up with at least one unique new feature to justify the upgrade to version 12, although the company’s usual relentless innovation produced a mixed bag this time around.

Open the Toolbox

Ironically, the marquee feature of Parallels Desktop 12 ($100 one-year Pro Edition or Business Edition subscription; $80 Standard Edition one-time purchase; $40 Student Edition one-time purchase) isn’t part of the core software at all, but a bundled standalone application called Parallels Toolbox (sold separately for $10) which is installed via Preferences. Toolbox consolidates 20 common, everyday tasks into a single menu bar window, making them easier to find and use.

These tools offer one-click simplicity for downloading or converting video, recording audio, muting the microphone, or performing system tasks such as locking the screen, hiding the desktop, preventing your Mac from going to sleep, and Do Not Disturb, which temporarily pauses notifications and Dock activity. Convenient? Yes, but none of the utilities are particularly special or unique, and power users are likely to have their own alternatives already installed.

Others are grouped into categories, providing functionality for taking screenshots, screen recording, archiving files, or managing time. I found the stopwatch, alarm, timer, and date countdown in the latter group particularly handy, since I typically defer such tasks to my iPhone or Apple Watch. Toolbox strictly works on the host OS—it has nothing to do with enhancing Mac, Windows, or Linux virtual machines.

One unfortunate side effect of Toolbox is that you’ll now have three separate Parallels icons taking up space on the menu bar: one for Toolbox, another for Desktop (when it’s actually running, of course), and a third for Parallels Access, the company’s $20 per year remote access service (included with annual Desktop subscriptions). There’s clearly room for some consolidation here, and the individual tools also add icon clutter to Launchpad, but at least they can be organized into a single folder there.

Always ready

If you spend an equal amount of time in Windows and macOS, Parallels Desktop 12 offers a number of welcome enhancements. Performance has been boosted across the board, with 25 percent faster access to shared folders and snapshots, and noticeably speedier suspend and resume—under five seconds on my 27-inch iMac Retina 5K.

VMs can now be configured to launch automatically when your Mac starts up, leaving them paused in the background while idle to avoid consuming valuable CPU time. (Remarkably, this continues to work even after quitting Desktop.) Located under Startup and Shutdown in the Options tab, “always ready in background” is accompanied by a handful of custom settings that determine how VMs behave when launched, closed, or shut down.

One of my biggest Windows 10 pet peeves is the heavy-handed approach to automatic updates. I don’t use Windows daily, so it every time I launch Parallels Desktop, performance is degraded as updates start installing in the background. The new Maintenance option allows such tasks to be blocked until the scheduled time, such as a weekend when my iMac isn’t in use. (VMs must be open at the time.) PD12 includes one year of free online storage (500GB) from Acronis, which can be used to back up your virtual machines.

Desktop 12 also makes using Windows on the Mac more seamless. Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents in Safari can be configured to open in their respective desktop Office 365 applications, and passwords entered in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge can now be saved in your Mac keychain.

Last but not least, Parallels offers independent screen resolutions for multiple displays. In full-screen mode, my iMac runs Retina Display resolution, while the adjacent 27-inch Thunderbolt Display works as an extended 2560 x 1440 desktop, each in their own Space. (Sadly, there are no independent settings for backgrounds.)

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There is at least one area where Desktop 12 takes a step back. Contextual menu shortcuts have been inexplicably removed from Control Center, which I always found quite handy for quickly reclaiming storage from my Windows VMs without having to open the Configure window.

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Alternative To Parallels

Bottom line

If you already have an annual subscription, installing Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac is a no-brainer. Although the new Toolbox utilities aren’t compelling enough on their own to justify $50 for a perpetual license upgrade, the performance improvements and macOS Sierra support certainly are.

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  Pros

  • 20 bundled Toolbox utilities for one-click common Mac tasks
  • Big performance gains
  • Always ready in background option for faster launch times
  • Schedule Windows 10 maintenance, software updates

  Cons

  • Toolbox adds third Parallels menu bar icon
  • No more contextual menu in Control Center
  • Promised macOS Sierra Storage Optimization support missing

Mac OS X only offers a few virtualization apps, but the competition is strong. We've chosen Parallels as our favorite thanks to its excellent performance, ease of use, and fantastic Mac-specific feature set.

Parallels Desktop

Is there a free alternative to Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMWare Fusion? Both Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMWare Fusion are available for download with a free trial and are reasonably priced. I would like to hear from Parallels about my earlier questions, and I recommend they remove the Kaspersky trial software. I think many Parallels users may unfortunately end up installing the Kaspersky software, unaware that they could be granting access to their files to unintended actors.

Parallels Desktop for Mac is a hardware emulation virtualization software, using hypervisor technology that works by mapping the host computer’s hardware resources directly to the virtual machine’s resources.

Platform: Mac OS X
Price: $80
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Features

• Easy installation of popular operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
• Run multiple virtualized environments simulatenously
• Windows virtualization offers many methods of integrating your virtualized environment with Mac OS X, such as file sharing (even via drag and drop) and external device sharing
• Coherence mode lets you run virtualized Windows applications just like they're regular applications in Mac OS X
• Virtualized Windows environments support your Mac's multitouch gestures, Éxpose, and Spaces (or Mission Control in OS X Lion)
• Supports Mac OS X Lion's full screen mode (which is actually really great for virtualized environments)
• Easily install Mac OS X Lion to a virtual machine from your restore partition
• Parallels Transporter ($5) helps you move your files from your existing Windows machine to the virtualized Windows machine on your new Mac
• Parallels Mobile ($5)
• Buy a copy of Windows directly from the Parallels app
• Fast performance all-around
• Capable of playing pretty much any game your hardware can handle, allowing the allocation of up to 1GB of video RAM
• Surround Sound 7.1 support

Where It Excels

Parallels Desktop is really a well-thought out application that has worked to consistently improve overall performance with every version and add new features to make virtualization easy enough for anybody. Installation was never complicated in the first version of Parallels, but now you pretty much just give it a disc (or disk image) and it handles the entirety of the installation for you. Since version 6 (current version is 7) I've been repeatedly surprised at how fast it runs and how easy it is to set up a virtual machine. You can always count on things getting faster and easier with each new version.

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Parallels was designed to work with Microsoft Windows. While it certainly supports Linux and Mac OS X virtualized environments just fine, Windows is clearly the focus. This is evident when you start using your virtualized environment and see how integrated Windows becomes. Files are shared between them. It's easy to access Windows app directly from Mac OS X. With Coherence Mode enabled, you can even run any Windows app like it's natively supported. It'll show up in your dock, have its own window, and respond like it's a Mac app. You can also run Windows full screen, in a Window, or in Modality Mode (which makes your virtual machine transparent). You have a ton of options.

If you're looking to run more than Windows, Parallels can handle Linux and Mac OS X as well. You can even install OS X Lion from the restore partition on your existing Mac. The overall idea behind Parallels Desktop seems to be taking the pain and tedious effort out of virtualization, and, in this regard, the software is very successful.

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Where It Falls Short

There are very few drawbacks to Parallels. Since we tend to opt for free software in most cases, Parallels' $80 price tag might seem a bit high. You do get a good discount on upgrades, however, as those usually are priced at $50 (and often $40 when first released). That said, it's a great application and warrants the cost. If you're looking for something a little more free, check out our competition section.

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Parallels Alternative Free Mac Download

As for issues with the software itself, there isn't much to speak of. Sometimes finding a particular setting in your virtual machine can be daunting because there are a remarkable number of options. Setup is so simple that when you go in to edit your machine's preferences it's almost shocking that there is so much available to configure. Once you get used to where things are it isn't bad, but it seems contrary to the simplicity found in the majority of the Parallels Desktop application. I've also noticed Parallels Tools sometimes forgets its installed on my Windows virtual machine, and other little quirks here and there, but nothing that particularly problematic. These little things should be expected with pretty much any virtualization software, just as they should be expected with any computer. When you're dealing with operating systems, there will always be a few unusual and minor things that pop up.

The Competition

VMWare Fusion ($80, currently $50 via promotion) is Parallels' primary competition and is preferred by some. Performance and features are mostly on-par when it comes to Windows virtualization (albeit a little slower at times), but VMWare's gaming performance doesn't stack up. It also doesn't have 3D support in Linux, if that matters to you. At the moment it's cheaper than Parallels by $30, so that may be enough of a draw if gaming doesn't interest you. VMWare Fusion is still a solid choice, but we feel, at this time, Parallels is noticeably better.

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Virtualbox is your free option. It doesn't offer a feature set that comes even close to Parallels or VMWare, but it also doesn't cost anything at all. If you simply need a virtualized environment for mostly any operating system and you don't need any of the hand-holding provided by your paid options, it's a solid choice. It's even preferred by some because it offers more technical features that other options do not. Basically, VirtualBox is a good alternative for you if you don't want to pay or are more interested in running a test environment than using your favorite Windows and Linux applications on your Mac.

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