OS X Guest Retina Display Behaviour

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ph4wks

Junior Member
Hello,

Is it possible on a Mac Book Pro Retina to attain the same resolution on the OS X guest as on the host.

Right now all I seem to be able to get is either tiny tiny icons with an almost invisible mouse pointer or scaled blurred graphics.
 
I'm having the same issue when running Mavericks as a guest OS running on Mavericks as the host OS with Parallels Desktop 9. Setting Video Memory to 128 and turning on "Enable Retina resolution" creates the tiny icons ph4wks speaks of. Trying to enable HiDPI mode with various tools and terminal commands do not work.
 
I'm having the same issue. Running Mavericks with a Mountain Lion VM in Parallels 9 with ParallelsTools installed but am unable to get highDPI resolution as I have in Mavericks. Please advise
 
Anybody try pursuing a trouble ticket with Parallels? My discussions with them have been unfruitful. They keep thinking it's a native resolution issue not a HiDPI issue. One guy wrote back
From your email, I understand that you are facing HiDPI resolution with Mavericks as a guest OS in a Mavericks HOST OS.

Parallels uses its own graphics emulated drivers. So, you cannot enable HiDPI resolution with Mavericks as a guest OS in Parallels Desktop.

The only way you may increase the graphics performance:

Configure -> Video -> increase Ram and enable 3D acceleration and retina display.

Please feel free to contact us, if you have any further inquiries about graphics issue in Parallels Desktop."
Click to expand...

Which seems to imply that we can't get HiDPI to work even though you can get full native resolution. This doesn't make any sense.

One person who has a little bit of clue mentioned the following:
Open Terminals and run the command as " sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true ".

Restart your virtual machine and try to change the resolution in Mavericks running as virtual machine, hope you will find HIDPI settings available now.
Click to expand...

This is of course what we've all tried and it doesn't work.
 
I had the tiny icon and text problem running Windows in the VM, and tech support was unable to resolve it. I fooled around a bit on my own and came up with an easy fix that works for me. It may sound counter-intuitive, but it gives me the result I need.

1. Turn off your virtual machine and exit Parallels if it is open.
2. Start Paralells.
3. From the menu bar at the top of the screen, select Virtual Machine>Configure.
4. Select Video from the column on the left.
5. Uncheck Enable Retina resolution.
6. Open your virtual machine.
7. Start Windows then open Control Panel and select Display.
8. Select the Settings tab and set the resolution. (1820x1088 works well for me)

YMMV - Good luck. I am running Mavericks 10.9.1 on a new late 2013 15 inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. Hopefully this will work for others with different configurations.

John
 
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I have the same machine and iOS and Parallels 9 but Windows XP. So the "video" is in a slightly different place. Virtual Machine>Configure then select Hardware (Maybe that step was obvious to others?) and then Video. Otherwise thanks a lot!! Solved the problem.
 
I too am having this issue.

MBP retina running Mavericks as the Host and Guest OS's using parallels 9

Guest OS has 128MB video ram, 3d accel enabled. retina resolution enable.
 
bpzdiver said:
Feelingweird, try the solution NCjohnboy outlined above.
Click to expand...

Hi bpzdiver,
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately that made the Guest OS (Mavericks, not windows) look pretty average. It seems to be doing some weird scaling - i assume because they use their own video drivers. It's not like turning of 'best for retina' on the HOST OS and scaling - which looks good.

i assume this is an underlying issue with parallels. Best guess is that it will be fixed in a future patch/version. Parallels are pretty good with keeping up with hardware/software changes.

cheers
kle
 
I have talked to Parallels support about this issue around May 2014. This is a known issue and they're working on supporting retina in the future. Make sure NOT to install Parallels Tools on your Mac VM. The feature is still not supported as of July 2014. Hopefully soon.
 
I'm having the same problem. I'm running Parallels 9 right now and evaluating an upgrade to Parallels 10. My host and guest OS are both Mac OS X 10.9.5. When I "Enable Retina resolution", the guest OS runs at full native resolution, but isn't aware that it's Retina DPI. It just treats it like a very large normal resolution monitor, so the icons and text end up half size.

It would be nice if Parallels could fix this, or figure out a workaround. If it's any incentive, this is the only feature I really wanted out of Parallels 10. I would have upgraded if it were working, but it's not, so I'm sticking with Parallels 9 and VMware Fusion 7. Parallels, if you can fix this, it'd be an insta-buy for me and probably other developers.
 
Same problem with Parallels 10. I'm trying to run Yosemite as a guest OS hosted by Yosemite. (I want to play with some system configuration stuff without messing up my actual system.) I'm on a Retina MacBook Pro. You'd think the easiest thing to get right is showing a Retina guest OS inside of a Retina host OS, but apparently not so. If you do not "Enable Retina resolution" you get large graphics. If you do "Enable Retina resolution" you get tiny graphics. There's no keeping things 1:1.
 
Same here. Problem report ID 67613945.

I am using OS X Yosemite as the host OS as well as the guest OS. The guest OS either supports 1440x900 non-retina or 2880x1800. It does not support 1440x900 in retina quality. I am on a MacBook Pro 15" Mid 2014 with Parallels 10.

Parallels guys, please figure this out. This has been an issue for a long long time for many people.
 
You can use full retina resolution by running the following command in your virtual machine's terminal:
Code: 
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist DisplayResolutionEnabled -bool true
then reboot your VM and activate high resolution in preferences. You will then be able to select a HiDPI resolution in OS X's display control panel.
 
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