Working in Full Screen

In the Full Screen mode, the guest operating system window occupies the whole screen and all Mac OS X and Parallels Desktop controls are hidden.

Note: You can change the virtual machine view mode only when the virtual machine is running.

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 on 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

If you want your virtual machine to use all available displays in the Full Screen mode, select Use All Displays in Full Screen from the View menu.

Note: All Mac OS X and Parallels Desktop controls are hidden when your virtual machine is working in the Full Screen view mode. If you want them to appear, press Ctrl+Alt.

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.

To set active screen corners or change other Full Screen options, go to the Full Screen pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.

Setting a Restriction on Switching From Full Screen

In the Security pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog, you can set a restriction on switching from the Full Screen mode. If you select the Exit full screen mode option in this pane, you will have to provide your administrator password each time you want to exit Full Screen.

To edit the security settings of your virtual machine:

Select Configure from the Virtual Machine menu to open the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.
Select the Options tab and go to the Security pane.

Hiding Parallels Desktop and all its windows in Full Screen.

When you are working with a virtual machine in the Full Screen mode and any Mac OS X application simultaneously, the easiest way to switch between the guest and host operating systems is to use the F6 shortcut. Pressing F6 hides Parallels Desktop and all its windows. You can use the same shortcut to make them visible again.

Note 1: To be able to use the F6 shortcut, make sure the Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts option is enabled in the Keyboard pane of Parallels Desktop Preferences.

Note 2: F6 is the default shortcut for hiding/showing Parallels Desktop. You can set another shortcut for these actions in the Keyboard pane of Parallels Desktop Preferences.