Changing the View Mode

Switching to the Full Screen Mode

You can run a guest operating system in the Full Screen mode when the guest operating system window occupies the whole screen and all Mac OS X and Parallels Desktop controls are hidden. To see the Mac OS X Dock and the Parallels Desktop menus while working in the Full Screen mode, press Ctrl+Alt.

To switch to the Full Screen mode, do one of the following:

Click the Full Screen button in the Parallels Desktop toolbar;
Choose Full Screen from the View menu;
Use the appropriate hot key combination (Alt+Cmd+Return by default); or
Note: The default hot key combinations can be configured in the Keyboard pane of the Preferences dialog.
Click the down arrow button near the Coherence button in the virtual machine status bar and choose Full Screen from the menu.

To switch the virtual machine from Full Screen to another view mode:

Press the appropriate hot key combination (Alt+Cmd+Return by default);
Press Ctrl+Alt to display the Parallels Desktop menus, click the View menu, and choose the view mode to which you want to switch your virtual machine; or
Press Ctrl+Alt to display the Dock, right-click the Parallels Desktop icon in the Dock, point to the View item, and choose the view mode to which you want to switch your virtual machine.

Switching to the Coherence Mode

The Coherence mode provides high level of integration between Mac OS X and your Windows guest operating system. In this mode, you can have the Mac OS X Dock, Windows taskbar, and any applications running under these operating systems on one desktop. For more information on the Coherence mode, see Working in the Coherence Mode .

To switch a running virtual machine to the Coherence view mode, do one of the following:

Click the Coherence button in the Parallels Desktop toolbar;
Choose Coherence from the View menu;
Use the appropriate hot key combination (Ctrl+Cmd+Return by default); or
Note: The default hot key combinations can be configured in the Keyboard pane of the Preferences dialog.
Click the Coherence button in the virtual machine status bar.

To switch the virtual machine from Coherence to another view mode:

Click the View menu and choose the view mode to which you want to switch your virtual machine;
Use the appropriate hot key combination (Ctrl+Cmd+Return by default); or
Right-click the Parallels Desktop icon in the Dock, point to the View item, and choose the view mode to which you want to switch your virtual machine.

Switching to the Modality Mode

When you switch your virtual machine to the Modality view mode , you can resize the virtual machine window and place it side by side with your Mac applications. The virtual machine window can be scaled to any size and its contents will still be active. This allows you to monitor the tasks running inside the virtual machine while you are working on the Mac side.

In the Modality mode, you can:

Simply resize the virtual machine window by dragging its right corner.
Resize the virtual machine window and change the ratio of its sides by pressing and holding Alt and dragging the window right corner.
Resize the virtual machine window and dynamically adjust the screen resolution by pressing and holding Shift and dragging the window right corner.

To switch a running virtual machine to the Modality mode, do one of the following:

Click the Modality button in the Parallels Desktop toolbar;
Choose Modality from the View menu;
Use the appropriate hot key combination (Ctrl+Alt+Cmd+Return by default).
Note: The default hot key combinations can be configured in the Keyboard pane of the Preferences dialog.
Click the down arrow button near the Coherence button in the virtual machine status bar and choose Modality from the menu.

To switch the virtual machine from Modality to another view mode:

Click the View menu and choose the view mode to which you want to switch your virtual machine;
Use the appropriate hot key combination (Ctrl+Alt+Cmd+Return by default); or
Right-click the Parallels Desktop icon in the Dock, point to the View item, and choose the view mode to which you want to switch your virtual machine.

When you switch back from Modality to the Window view mode, the toolbar is hidden. If you want to add it back to the virtual machine window, choose Show Toolbar from the View menu.

To customize the Modality settings, refer to the Modality pane of Virtual Machine Configuration.