Parallels Desktop | User's Guide

Option

Description

Mouse

If you play games in a virtual machine, the Mouse menu allows you to set how to use a mouse:

• Auto-detect for games. This is a recommended default setting. If you're working with a guest OS application, the mouse moves freely between the guest operating system and macOS. However, when you start a game, the mouse input is automatically captured in the virtual machine so that you couldn't move the mouse to macOS by mistake and automatically released when you quit the game.
• Optimize for games. If your mouse accidentally moves to macOS when you're playing a game, select this option to make the mouse work in the virtual machine only. To release the mouse input and switch to macOS, press Ctrl + Alt.
• Don't optimize for games. In some rare cases, Parallels Desktop may detect an application as a game and the mouse starts working incorrectly with the application. If you have this problem, choose Don't optimize for games.

Mouse pointer sticks at window edges

When working with a virtual machine in Window view mode, you may often need to move the mouse pointer to the edges of the virtual machine window to display various guest OS items: for example, to display the Start menu in Windows 8, hidden taskbar in Windows XP, or macOS menu bar when any of the guest macOS applications is running in full screen.

The Mouse pointer sticks at window edges option makes the mouse pointer pause for a while at the edges of the virtual machine window and you won't move the mouse outside of the virtual machine window by mistake. To move past the edge, just move the mouse quickly.

Keyboard

Choose Optimize for games from the Keyboard menu if you actively use the modifier keys Option (Alt), Ctrl, and Shift in action games. When this option is selected, signals from these keys are processed immediately.