Create New Keyboard Shortcuts

You can press certain key combinations, called keyboard shortcuts, to quickly trigger various actions in Parallels Desktop. For example, you can press Command-Control-F to switch Windows to Full Screen mode. You can use existing keyboard shortcuts (you can see them in the Parallels Desktop > Preferences > Shortcuts > Application Shortcuts pane), and you can also create your own.

To create a new keyboard shortcut:

1. Make a note of the name for the command you want a shortcut for as it appears in a menu in Parallels Desktop. For example, if you want to create a new shortcut for switching to Full Screen mode, you can see by opening the View menu in Parallels Desktop that the name of the menu item is Enter Full Screen :

   

2. In Mac OS X, choose Apple Menu > System Preferences.
3. In System Preferences, click Keyboard and click Keyboard Shortcuts .
4. Select Application Shortcuts in the sidebar and click the Add button .
5. If you want a new shortcut to work only for Parallels Desktop, choose Parallels Desktop from the Application menu. If you leave All Applications selected, the shortcut will work for any application that has the same command name and is currently active.
6. Enter the menu item name from Step 1.

   Important: You must enter the command name exactly as it appears in the Parallels Desktop menu or your new shortcut won't work.

7. In the Keyboard Shortcut field, press the key combination that you want to trigger the action.

Notes:

1. You must create separate shortcuts for commands that change in the menu depending on the state of Parallels Desktop, such as Enter Full Screen and Exit Full Screen .

2. You can also create keyboard shortcuts to work with Windows (and other guest OS) applications running in Coherence mode . To find out what a command for a Windows application is called, launch the application, switch Windows to Coherence mode, and check the application menus as described in Step 1 above.