Parallels Desktop 19 Adds Password-Less Sign-In With Touch ID Support, macOS Sonoma Compatibility, and More

by

Parallels Desktop 19 for Mac has been released, bringing some notable new features and performance enhancements to the virtualization software, including password-less Sign-in with Touch ID Integration and full support for Apple's forthcoming macOS Sonoma operating system.

Screenshot 2023 08 22 at 11
Touch ID on Macs lets users authenticate logins and Apple Pay transactions with their fingerprint, and beginning with Parallels Desktop 19, users with a secure Windows login and password can now use Touch ID to sign in to Windows virtual machines, simplifying the login process.

Parallels Desktop 19 also brings optimized compatibility with macOS Sonoma, including re-engineered Shared Printing via Internet Printing protocol (IPP) that supports printing from Windows apps, with minimal setup required.

In addition, DP 19 promises a richer experience using VMs on Apple silicon Macs, thanks to dynamic resolution adjustments and familiar multitouch gestures with Trackpad support. Meanwhile, Pro Edition users can remotely access a macOS Sonoma 14 VM via port forwarding, which is useful for VMs hosted on Amazon EC2 Mac cloud instances.

The Parallels Desktop software has also been given a design overhaul, with a new app icon and a refreshed UI that aims to make navigation simpler, along with native dialogs for easier interaction with the app.

Windows touch id PD 19
There are several other improvements highlighted in the release notes for Parallels Desktop 19, including:

  • Improved OpenGL support, up to version 4.1, for running more CAD software on Mac, including VariCAD, Deswik.CAD, Vectorworks Vision 2023, and more.
  • Improved performance for AcrGIS Pro, a map designing application.
  • Compatible to run CentOS 9 Stream on Mac computers with Apple silicon, along with an updated set of ready-to-go Linux distributions, including Ubuntu 22.04.2, Fedora 38, Debian 12, and more.
  • New option to create Arm-based Linux VM on Mac computers with Apple silicon using Rosetta to run x86-64 binaries, including containers.
  • Enhanced support for the HashiCorp’s Packer and Vagrant with macOS VM on Apple silicon.
  • New option to create, group, and manage Parallels VMs and their containers from the Visual Studio Code extension.
  • Support for enrolling Windows in Windows management solutions, such as Microsoft Intune and others, when deploying it using Parallels My Account Configuration Profile or as a shared file.

Parallels Desktop 19 for Mac Standard, Pro, and Business editions can be purchased or upgraded to at parallels.com/desktop or from authorized resellers. For more information, including the option to download a free trial, see the Parallels website.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Parallels. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Tag: Parallels Desktop

Popular Stories

iOS 26 on iPhone Feature

Here's When iOS 26 Rolls Out Today in Every Time Zone [Update: Out Now!]

Monday September 15, 2025 12:00 am PDT by
Update 10:06 a.m.: iOS 26 is rolling out now, though it may take a bit for all users to see it, so keep checking! Today's the day! Apple is about to release iOS 26, which will deliver the biggest redesign since iOS 7 and bring a range of new features and improvements to iPhones worldwide. It's Apple's biggest software update of the year, and Apple announced at last week's iPhone event that...
Read Full Article • 95 comments
Tim Cook Rainbow

Apple Reportedly Plans to Launch These 10 Products in 'Coming Months'

Sunday September 14, 2025 8:45 am PDT by
Apple's annual September event is now in the rearview mirror, with the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, iPhone Air, Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch Ultra 3, Apple Watch SE 3, and AirPods Pro 3 set to launch this Friday, September 19. As always, there is more to come. In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple plans to release many products in the...
Read Full Article • 76 comments
iOS 26 Battery Glass Feature

Apple Says Installing iOS 26 Might Impact Battery Life

Monday September 15, 2025 10:56 am PDT by
In the iOS 26 release notes, Apple is warning iPhone users that installing the new software might have a temporary impact on battery life, which is normal. A new support document explains that major iOS updates require background setup like indexing data and files for search, downloading new assets, and updating apps. Further, Apple says that new features could require more resources,...
Read Full Article • 112 comments
apple n1 chip

Apple's New N1 Chip in iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air Has a Wi-Fi 7 Limitation

Saturday September 13, 2025 10:01 am PDT by
The latest iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air models are equipped with Apple's all-new N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread connectivity. However, the chip has a Wi-Fi 7 bandwidth limitation. According to FCC documents reviewed by MacRumors, the N1 chip in all of the new iPhone models supports up to 160 MHz channel bandwidth for Wi-Fi 7, short of the...
Read Full Article • 102 comments
iphone 17 lineup

iPhone 17 Models Launch on September 19 With These New Features

Friday September 12, 2025 7:58 am PDT by
Apple will launch its new iPhone 17 lineup and ultra-thin iPhone Air in stores on Friday, September 19, and the company has already shown off the new devices at its fall event, which ran with the the tagline "Awe dropping." The iPhone 17 series brings a host of new features and enhancements. Here's a rundown of the biggest upgrades and changes: iPhone 17 Display Changes The iPhone...
Read Full Article • 17 comments
AirPods Pro Firmware Feature

AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 Get iOS 26 Features With New Firmware Update

Monday September 15, 2025 10:50 am PDT by
Apple today released updated firmware for the AirPods Pro 2 and the AirPods 4, introducing support for the new AirPods features that are included in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe. The firmware has a build number of 8A356, and it replaces the current 7E93 firmware. With Apple's new software updates, the AirPods Pro 2 and the AirPods 4 support better audio quality for phone calls and...
Read Full Article • 59 comments
iPhone 17 Pro Air Boxes

iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro Boxes Revealed

Sunday September 14, 2025 1:36 pm PDT by
T-Mobile President Jon Freier today shared real-world photos of Apple's boxes for the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 models, which launch on Friday. Image Credit: Jon Freier Apple has typically included iPhone box renders in its product environmental reports, but it did not do so for the latest models. However, Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program page does offer some images of the boxes, ...
Read Full Article • 74 comments

Top Rated Comments

Kevrani Avatar
Kevrani
27 months ago
When VMWare Fusion is free and the 2023 preview is REALLY easy to install and has DirectX 11 on ARM, it's a hard sell for Parallels.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Sir Ruben Avatar
Sir Ruben
27 months ago
I quite liked Parallels but was really put off by their pricing/upgrade model.
Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DaveFlash Avatar
DaveFlash
27 months ago

It’s a company with the Russian roots. The founder is from Russia, and all the development was in Russia for many years.
also incorrect, it always was a US company, but at one time had R&D facilities in Russia, these days it's a part of Corel which is Canadian.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
HobeSoundDarryl Avatar
HobeSoundDarryl
27 months ago
Since ARM Windows is far from full Windows, another option for about Parallels annual rate times 5 or 8 is to buy an actual PC. That kind of budget can buy a surprisingly robust Mac Mini-like PC that will then run anything that runs on Windows, not just some things that run in Windows ARM. That's what I did: "old fashioned bootcamp."

I also chose a 5K2K monitor with more than one video input so that both Mac and PC can share the same monitor without switching cables. Monitor has built-in hub so that both can share the same keyboard and mouse too. Monitor is an ultra-wide so- if desired- I can split screen to have both Mac and PC on the same screen at the same time. That "feels" very much like Parallels, minus the annual fee.

A modest Mac budget will buy a LOT of PC power and PC key upgrades like RAM and SSD have lots of competition driving down prices and margins so that most of the money one might spend on either is actually buying RAM and SSD... instead of deepening the cash pool in another vault.

Windows 11 is not nearly as bad as Mac fans spin. And all that stuff that we wish Windows emulation could do fully works on an actual PC. Bonus: since PCs are focused on Power instead of PPW, some things that lean on raw power get done faster on PC. So now I just parse out computing tasks accordingly. Some stuff I used to do on Mac now gets done on PC.

"Think different" works well this way for me. Perhaps for some of you too?
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sirozha Avatar
sirozha
27 months ago
I love Parallels and have used it for 15 years now. One knock against them is that this is a Russian company likely cooperating with the FSB just like Kasperski. They can’t not cooperate, so it’s anyone’s guess what Parallels siphons off the Mac and the VMs. Unfortunately, VMware Fusion is so much behind that it’s no longer a competition.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
antibolo Avatar
antibolo
27 months ago
Re: "Boot Camp"

What you have to understand is that running Windows natively on a Intel Mac was trivial because an Intel Mac was really just a PC with an Apple firmware. Apple didn't have anything else to do than make an assistant to setup dual booting, and write a few drivers for Apple-specific peripherals (for Windows XP they also needed BIOS emulation, but later Windows supports EFI booting so that's no longer needed, Windows 7 and above can boot 100% natively).

The ARM architecture doesn't work like that, any given vendor's system is very different because there's no equivalent to the PC standard in the ARM world, so the OS needs to be specifically customized to run on a given system.

ARM Windows can be virtualized on a ARM Mac because the VM can reproduce an ARM machine that Windows already supports. To run natively, Windows would need to specifically support Macs.

Unless Apple actively cooperates with Microsoft to make ARM Windows compatible with Macs, you'll never see Windows running natively on a ARM Mac.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Read All Comments