Freezing issue when running macOS VM on Parallels

Working with my MacOS VM for another 10 hours since my last post and I can confirm this seems ONLY to happen when scrolling by using two fingers on the trackpad. Especially egregious when scrolling in VS Code but also happens when scrolling in Safari and some other apps.

 

My SOLUTION: Connect a USB mouse and don't use the trackpad inside the VM. Haven't tried a Magic Mouse.

This situation is primarily in Chromium (Chrome/VSCode) app - and the problem is the trackpad handling (separate trackpad is unusable, but the built in MBP trackpad is almost as bad). This problem isn't specific to Parallels; VirtualBuddy (open source on GitHub) has the exact same problem.

 

Ok. So I think I've fixed this issue thanks to a post from another user in a different thread. Copying here:
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After a year with this issues I have found the issue on my windows 11 instance, there is a power plan created for by Parallels and under advanced settings -> Hard disk -> Turn off hard disk after -> On battery = 0. Even if the computer was I plugged in, this had effect. Update to 999999 or create a new PowerPlan with High performance. Its been working now for several days...
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I changed the time to 20 minutes instead of 999999. It seems to be working for me.

 

Note that these problems can occur when using Time Machine to back up the host. Local snapshots interfere with the disk drive behaviour, causing timeouts. See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255461563 for instructions on deleting local snapshots.

 

Same here. M2 Max, Mac OS Sonoma 14.5, guest also Mac OS (Sonoma 14.6). Horrible freezes in VS Code and Google Chrome when using two-finger scrolling on trackpad.

A very similar problem occurs with the open-source UTM virtual machines: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/issues/4636. In fact, I started with UTM and then came to Parallels hoping that there would be no scrolling freezes... a bummer.

So this may be related to Apple's virtualization platform rather then a particular implementation (Parallems vs UTM vs ...)

 

I don't use Parallels but I use several other virtualization solutions, all which use Apple's virtualization framework on M* platform and they freeze when scrolling with the trackpad or magic mouse. I couldn't believe scrolling was causing it to freeze until I read this thread. How on earth does scrolling cause a virtualization framework to freeze? Unbelievable.

 

Very believable. Touchpad scrolling is "smooth" so there would be a very large number of internal "events" generated so kind of I can imagine how these events may overwhelm something and cause a freeze. It also looks like slow scrolling is the worst. Freezing is not that noticeable or does not exist when fast scrolling larger chunks at a time.

 

Dear Parallels! While apparently this seems to be an Apple virtualization problem, you guys are most well-known company and your engineering should have best best-channels to Apple engineers to getting this fixed for everyone. If not you, then who? Please. Work with Apple on this issue already.

This issue makes Mac OS virtualization on Apple Silicon basically unusable.

 

me too M4 MacBook Pro 48gb ram. os 15.3.1 in vm and 15.1.1 on host.

 

I note that no-one seems to have taken any notice of my post above. It may seem unrelated but the hard drive, since it is involved with memory caching, can affect nearly every part of the OS. I suffered from six months of random short freezes, tried support, ditched parallels and bought a VMWare license, tried that (it did the same), nearly went insane. Then discovered that in Windows Event Log I was getting (virtual) hard drive timeouts, finally found the Time Machine Snapshot issue. This 100% fixed everything and the problems have never reoccurred. Parallels don't really seem to be aware of this issue, and I suspect that the actual problem lies in the Mac virtualisation support, not in the Parallels code. I would urge everyone to have at least a quick look for time Machine snapshots and remove them, as per my previous post. It'll take you 5 minutes and may solve the problem. Sorry to get on the soapbox, but the memory is still raw for me. This is a really easy thing to try.

 

So I have played around with this quite a bit. It is definitely related to concurrency. If spotlight is indexing in either the host or guest, it will slow down. If I open firefox and point it at cnn (which is particularly concurrent with video...Horrible page design) things slow down. My control is running pycharm on a small project. scrolling source code will start out smooth. All scrolling is done through the trackpad (M1 mac, 60GB of memory, 20 allocated to the VM, 128GB HDD, 4TB SSD on the host, 8 processors allocated to the VM).

I set the "performance" on power so when plugged in it isn't automatic for the host. This seemed to work. I had multiple apps up and scrolling was smooth. I then unplugged (which should have moved it to a lower performance tier), and indeed the sticky scrolling came back.

But then I wasn't able to reliably reproduce it. Coincidence? Who knows. I run backblaze backup on the host, and I can tell you that when it is running everything sucks. So that definitely has an impact on the guest OS.

The feeling I get is that the Parallels application is not good at sharing. either internally within the application, or between the host and guest for macos. I'm sure it is in the virtualization framework as enough people have complained about other virtualization SW.

 

maybe it seems funny, but i once just restarted my computer and the problem totally evaded. just simple as that

 

That does absolutely seem to work for me. But it is annoying. Sometimes just restarting the guest works. But sometimes I restart the host. I've been trying to come up with ways to make it happen (lightly loaded guest, then load up the host for example).

 

broken record here, but restarting your computer could well remove a time machine snapshot. I'd still say there's a decent chance that's what it is. If the issue is at all load dependent, it's because when the computer is under load it uses the disk more. Especially when switching between application windows.

 

I have discovered what some of the other posters mentioned, if I scroll with the trackpad (second nature after so many years on macOS!) you will get the freezing. If I scroll using the slider of the active window then I experience no freezing. I did turn off GPU hardware support in Brave and that seems to have no effect other than making the scrolling less smooth.

This is a workaround for now for that particular problem

 

So are you saying you have to use the slider by clicking and dragging it up or down the oldschool way?

 

Unfortunately, yes. It's not ideal but until the underlying issue gets fixed then it's a decent workaround. The virtualised Mac also seems to be a little more stable too without using scrolling on the track pad.

 

Assuming the same issue here, Tech Report ID: 502191413

• Parallels Version 26.0.1 (57243)
• Apple M3 Max, 15.5 (24F74)
  
• Host: Power Settings are set to `High Power`
• guest VM
  • mac X os 15.5 (24F74)
  • 6 CPU
  • 32 GB RAM
  • Parallels Tools installed
  • disabled TimeMachine via (`sudo tmutil disable`)

when using VSCode or Intellij PyCharm, scrolling from the touchpad is "sticky"/"freezing" - almost impossible to use, same when using the scroll bar on a side or when using external mouse

 

update to the above post, got some improvements in the guest Mac X os by (google search how to do it on your X os version):
Parallels

1. update to 26.1.1 (57288)
2. update/re-install parallel tools in the guest

Guest Mac X os preference changes:

1. Check and turn off indexing
   
2. Disable timemachine
3. Limit animations: Go to System Settings > Accessibility > Display and enable "Reduce motion" and "Reduce transparency"

VM config change,

1. bumped up from 32 GB RAM to 48 GB

IntelliJ config changes, added the following java VM options:

1. -Xmx8192m
2. -Dsun.java2d.metal=false
3. -Dsun.java2d.uiScale.enabled=false

now, VSCode works well (no changes in VSCode config)

and IntelliJ (and other apps like Chrome) feels better, but still not ideal to use at all... now more like periodic "freezing of the whole UI" from time to time, and doing just a simple windows switch between IntelliJ and VSC in guest fixes the freeze

my hypothesis, is that 3D rendering is not well implemented by apple virtual framework or parallels is not using it correctly for the Apple Silicon M3 Max (or similar) in case host and guest are X oses (15.5)

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I'm not criticizing, but offering my help if anyone from parallels want's to use my time to troubleshoot the issue and fix it (if possible), If I need to report another "Tech Report", let me know of PM me