Virtual Machine View Modes

Parallels Desktop provides a number of view modes to make your work with virtual machines more comfortable and efficient:

• Window mode . In this mode, the virtual machine screen is displayed as a separate window. This is the default view mode.

  

• Full Screen mode . In this mode, the virtual machine screen is expanded to occupy the whole of your physical computer screen.

  The Full Screen-related settings can be configured in the Full Screen pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.

• Coherence mode . In this mode, the virtual machine desktop is invisible. You can see only the windows of running guest OS applications and work with them side by side with your Mac OS X applications.

  Note: The Coherence view mode is available only for Windows virtual machines with Parallels Tools installed .

  

  In the picture above, you can see a virtual machine running in the Coherence view mode. The virtual machine itself is hidden however, if you launch any guest OS application, for example, Internet Explorer, its window will be visible. You will be able to work with Internet Explorer side by side with your Mac OS X applications (for example, with Chess).

  The Coherence-related settings can be configured in the Coherence pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.

• Modality mode . In this mode you can view the virtual machine and the programs running inside it in a transparent scaled window while working in Mac OS X. By default, this window appears on top of all opened windows, so you can supervise your virtual machine during your work in Mac OS X.

  

  You may find this view mode useful when your virtual machine is performing a time-consuming task that does not require your interaction. For example, if you start copying some files from an external storage to your virtual machine, you can switch it to Modality. The virtual machine window will become transparent and scalable and you will be able to view the file copy progress in it. In the meantime, you can start or continue working with Mac OS X.

  The Modality-related settings can be configured in the Modality pane of the Virtual Machine Configuration dialog.

For switching between these modes, you can use the View menu commands or toolbar buttons.

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