PD12 Messes Up Multiple Monitors

M

MobyR

Bit poster
Hello,

I am very disappointed you sent out an email encouraging us to upgrade when there is a big problem with multiple monitors in PD12.
I have two monitors working perfectly in Win 10 with PD11.

As soon as I upgraded to PD 12 I could not have both monitors appear at the same time. Instead they are in separate OS X spaces, which completely defeats the purpose of multiple monitors.

Please fix this problem before you send out emails encouraging people to upgrade.

I am not amused that I had my time wasted and I am a loyal subscriber.
 
Best answer
Dmitry Geynisman
Hi guys, I am happy to let you know that we were able to improve multi-monitor support in the new Parallels Desktop 14 version (see updates summary).

With Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac installed simply disable 'Displays have separate spaces' > make sure that 'Use All Displays in Full Screen' is enabled (VM's menu bar > View) > enter Full Screen mode and you will be able to swipe between all displays at once. See how it works.

We also did a bunch of improvements to multi-monitor support and overall product performance. Will be happy to hear your feedback.
Sort by date Sort by votes
StefanW6 said:
I wonder if it will actually allow us to do what we all want to do. Run Mac OS full screen on one monitor and the VM full screen on another. Not full screen VM on all monitors.
Click to expand...
This possible only when you enable 'Displays have separate spaces' in macOS system preferences > Mission Control. Then log out from Mac user acccount, log in back. Disable 'Use All Displays in Full Screen' via VM menu bar > View. Move VM window to corresponding monitor and enter Full Screen mode.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
StefanW6 said:
Looks like that is just full screen on ALL monitors. What all of us want and need is a full screen Windows VM on ONE of the monitors and Mac OS on the rest of them. Just like it used to be up until PD11
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, it is not technically possible with macOS native full screen. Every macOS app behaves the same way on Mac (with 'Displays have separate spaces' disabled) - when switching to Full Screen external displays will be black. We succeeded in extending Windows displays to external ones to allow you swipe between Mac and Windows context in one gesture. But making Windows VM on one display and show macOS on others when displays doesn't have separate spaces is not possible.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Dmitry@Parallels said:
Unfortunately, it is not technically possible with macOS native full screen. Every macOS app behaves the same way on Mac (with 'Displays have separate spaces' disabled) - when switching to Full Screen external displays will be black. We succeeded in extending Windows displays to external ones to allow you swipe between Mac and Windows context in one gesture. But making Windows VM on one display and show macOS on others when displays doesn't have separate spaces is not possible.
Click to expand...

It is possible. Or better, it used to always work. Up until PD 11. Sounds like the programmers didn't quite understand the issue. Simply turn displays have separate spaces off, put the VM on one monitor and make that one VM full screen on that one monitor. DO NOT use Apple's crippled implementation of full screen but simply use whatever Parallels did all the years and I guess simulate it by showing the VM in a borderless full screen window. Don't know why that it so hard to bring back from PD 11 and before. It worked so well!!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
StefanW6 said:
It is possible. Or better, it used to always work. Up until PD 11. Sounds like the programmers didn't quite understand the issue. Simply turn displays have separate spaces off, put the VM on one monitor and make that one VM full screen on that one monitor. DO NOT use Apple's crippled implementation of full screen but simply use whatever Parallels did all the years and I guess simulate it by showing the VM in a borderless full screen window. Don't know why that it so hard to bring back from PD 11 and before. It worked so well!!
Click to expand...
It is hard because it's simply a hack that requires using obsolete non-supported macOS SDK tools, it brings a lot of issues that need additional support in terms of Engineering and QA but not benefits much to the majority of users, as the same goal (exclusive Full Screen for VM) can be achieved by enabling 'Displays have separate spaces'.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Dmitry@Parallels said:
It is hard because it's simply a hack that requires using obsolete non-supported macOS SDK tools, it brings a lot of issues that need additional support in terms of Engineering and QA but not benefits much to the majority of users, as the same goal (exclusive Full Screen for VM) can be achieved by enabling 'Displays have separate spaces'.
Click to expand...

I don't think there are that few power users who would appreciate a nice, working full screen mode where you can have multiple monitors and just one be a full screen VM, much like having several PCs sitting on your desk, but they are all using one mouse/keyboard. It used to work so well (and PD11 still does). So whatever magic was in there, it still works and it's a shame that Apple completely crippled the full screen experience with their unusable concept.
Sometimes a good hack is what people need, because that sets the product apart from others and helps circumvent unnecessarily inconvenient operation.
I wonder how long PD11 will continue to work. It's just such a shame to be 3 years behind and miss out on other new (and maybe useful) features.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Question is how PD14 does on this?. One of the launch claims is that this is improved.
The next few days should tell us if this is the case. Just upgrading now....
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
Like PD 12 and 13, I have uninstalled 14 and have gone back to 11.

I have two displays. One is exclusively for MacOS and the other is split between Windows and whatever else needs some extra space. With Parallels 11, I can have my Windows VM open in full screen and still have the ability to have other MacOS windows open on top of it while clicking through to the VM will bring it to the front.

In short, I am going to keep using PD11 until it breaks in an Apple OS update. Once that happens, the next best thing for me is going to be to run Parallels in windowed mode to fill the display.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
PD14, does still need 'separate spaces' to do this. With this set it seems to work well.
It does appear to have some noticeably better screen functions in other areas (a couple of OpenGL applications run perfectly now, which did not work right in the earlier versions, Direct X seems to be working better too). The actual Parallels application does seem to launch much better on boot than in the older versions. So provided you are prepared to accept needing to have 'separate spaces' set, this seems to genuinely be an upgrade. However if you want full screen without this it is still PD11....
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
RogerH6 said:
PD14, does still need 'separate spaces' to do this. With this set it seems to work well.
It does appear to have some noticeably better screen functions in other areas (a couple of OpenGL applications run perfectly now, which did not work right in the earlier versions, Direct X seems to be working better too). The actual Parallels application does seem to launch much better on boot than in the older versions. So provided you are prepared to accept needing to have 'separate spaces' set, this seems to genuinely be an upgrade. However if you want full screen without this it is still PD11....
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot for the feedback, appreciate that.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
AndrewY2 said:
No hack required: resize the VM to the size of the display, make the titlebar transparent and then hide the titlebar buttons. None of that is obsolete or unsupported, and it would allow us to have both a Mac and "fullscreen" Windows desktop up at the same time.
Click to expand...
We cannot simply resize the VM, that's the problem - it will not work then for multiple displays. Displays have custom arrangement, their own coordinates, and we need to report the same to Windows, meaning that we have to create separate displays in Windows with similar coordinates, otherwise Windows UI simply not going to work correctly.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I see this is still an ongoing issue, but thanks for keeping this thread going. This was precisely the information I was looking for. Apparently Parallels 11 is the last version I can use as well.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks for asking Dmitry. There are many situations where Windows full screen on a monitor is needed. OSX's way of turning off other screens when going full screen is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, particularly in a multi monitor environment (there are 3 screens here.) I realize that's not a Parallels problem, but Parallels 11 allowed me to work around that.

I can't use "Separate Spaces" as that leaves a menu bar at the top of each screen; one of our displays is for video playback for clients, I can't have that menu.

Graphics features are minimized in Windows (no Aero, etc.) when in Coherence mode.

It's often simply "nice," and frankly very productive, to have what appears to be two separate machines (Windows and Mac) on side by side monitors and being able to share files.

As things are though this discussion may now be moot. I'm running a test setup with an upgrade to Mojave. It won't show mounted Windows drives on the Mac desktop (only the C: drive, not others.) I also can't open any Windows files in Mac applications, the app opens but the file does not show up. I can't navigate to it from the program. Windows is showing roughly 16 new Mac drives in Explorer, all inaccessible. I've tried the usual steps to rectify this, no luck. I don't want to take this thread off topic, but I doubt starting another thread will get me much support for Parallels 11 at this point.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
StefanW6 said:
Looks like that is just full screen on ALL monitors. What all of us want and need is a full screen Windows VM on ONE of the monitors and Mac OS on the rest of them. Just like it used to be up until PD11
Click to expand...

Stefan, isn't that what this whole thread is about? I know it was the issue I was complaining of. I want Mac OS to occupy both screens, and Windows to occupy both screens. Then you can toggle between dual monitor Mac and dual monitor Windows in one swipe. That (I think) is what the video is showing, and if so it appears to be resolved. But now others are saying it's not... Can anyone confirm?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
gmelin said:
I have the same issue. I have used Parallels since it supported multiple monitors. I am now trying to use OS Sierra with VM win8.1 and parallels 12. I have 3 monitors (iMac plus 2). My issue is that I cannot get the three monitors all in sync (attached in one Space). Each one has a separate space. I had no issue with Parallels 11 and this just occurred after upgrade. I have tried every Mission Control setting but nothing works. I did the download of the new version of PD12.1.3 (41532) and tried "Display have separate Spaces" but that is ridiculous. I use several VMs at the same time and it creates so many separate Spaces that it is unusable! PLEASE FIX THIS EGREGIOUS BUG!
Click to expand...
HOORAY! PD14 fixed this issue. I am finally able to upgrade from PD11 and use Mojave. Thank you!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
JamesMcDowell said:
gmelin, are you saying you can have a VM go full screen on one monitor while the other two still display the Mac OS? Without using "separate spaces?"
Click to expand...

No I actually have no need for that. I use 3 monitors with up to 3 VMs plus Mac OS and need them all "linked" together so I can move Spaces (with trackpad) back and forth rapidly. I is like having 4 machines in 1 = 3 PCs and 1 Mac :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top