Win 11: drag&drop mouse info tips do not update on modifier press

Hello,

could someone please confirm the following issue:

Go to Windows' File Explorer on your Parallels Win 11 installation.

Do some testing with any or all of these drag-and-drop operations:

Drag a file within the same folder and don't release it. Press various modifier keys (CTRL, ALT, SHIFT). Does the mouse info tip update to the action that is actually going to be performed?

In particular:

Attach a drive (e.g. NTFS or FAT formatted USB Stick) to your macbook, ideally attaching it such that it will show up in Windows as an external (non network) drive.

drag a file from C:...Desktop to that drive and do not release it. The mouse info tip should indicate that it wants to COPY it. Pressing a modifiert (I think shift?) should now cause that info box to update the text "COPY" to the text "MOVE" so you know what is going to happen.

On my install, this does not happen. It will continue to say "COPY" even though it will be moving the file.
Sometimes "MOVE" will show flickering for a spit second which indicates this is a bug.

Can anybody confirm? Does anybody have access to a Win 11 computer that is not a VM and report here if the issue is a global Windows but, or related to Parallels or ARM?

Thank you!

 

The issue can be fixed by choosing "Optimize for games." (keyboard) in the keyboard/mouse options.

However, there is a warning there:
"Note: You're not recommended to optimize keyboard for games when not playing games. Some key combinations with the Ctrl, Alt, Shift or Option keys may not work."
Cf also:
https://kb.parallels.com/119070

I am now wondering:

1. Exactly which combinations will not work, and why.
2. What other issues might selecting "Optimize for games." cause?

Note also that within windows virtual keyboard, it works always of course: click CTRL on the virtual keyboard, and ctrl will be held down. Perform a drag and drop action that you want to happen with CTRL pressed down. Release mouse button to finalize the action. Click CTRL on virtual keyboard again.

I wonder if it would be possible for Parallels to detect that a DRAG action is currently ongoing, and for the duration of that drag action automatically change behavior from "don't optimize for games" to "optimize for games".

I you wonder what the difference is, see above linked KB article. Also just go to virtual keyboard and press CTRL on the hardware keyboard, once with and once without "optimize for games" activated and you will see the difference.

 

Also ran into this. WPF KeyDown event for modifier keys (Ctrl, Shift, Alt) is actually delivered when I release the key, not when I press the key. So I press Ctrl, nothing happens, then I release Ctrl and I get both KeyDown and KeyUp for it in rapid succession.

I enabled Keyboard: Optimize for games, and KeyDown started getting delivered when I expect it, e.g. when I press the key.

Now I'm wondering what are the downsides and why are they not recommending it. Is there a CPU or power consumption penalty?

Would also be curious as to what this mode does exactly: when you press a modifier key alone, it looks like it postpones delivering the event to the Windows OS, and then when another key is pressed or released it delivers the keys in batch. Not sure when is it ever useful.