I am having a problem where through the day, my shift key randomly starts acting as if it is stuck. Clicking in file manager on a single file selects a whole group of files. Text is all capitalized when typing. I though I had a bad keyboard and even switched it out until the problem continued and then even happened with just my MacBook Pro's built in keyboard. I soon figured out that when the problem happens I have to click on a Mac application then click back to the windows one and the "stuck" shift key issue goes away...until it happens again a couple of hours later. I'm using Parallels 10 in Coherence mode on a MacBook Pro 2015 running Mac OSX 10.10.4 Yosemite. I am also running a CentOS 6.5 VM. I have tried changing the keyboard to performance mode for gaming and that didn't help. This problem is driving me nuts.
Hello AndreF1, You need to edit the modifier keys handling settings in your virtual machine configuration. To do this, refer: http://kb.parallels.com/en/116994
Hi, thanks for your reply, but as I stated in my original post: "I have tried changing the keyboard to performance mode for gaming and that didn't help."
Hello AndreF1, Please Go to Parallels Desktop icon > Preferences > Keyboard > System Shortcuts > Select system shortcuts to " Always " > Restart the Windows to check if the issue still persisting.
This doesn't fix it either. I still encounter stuck shift keys in MacOS and Windows 7 and 10 guests. It most often happens when shift-clicking, eg., shift selecting a range of items or holding down shift as a modifier in 3D modeling apps.
Keycastr https://github.com/keycastr/keycastr is pretty helpful for visualizing the difference. Try running one copy inside a Parallels macOS guest, and another on the host machine. Then play with various combinations of multiple modifier keys and mouse clicks and you can see the cases where the shift or control keys lag or get stuck. When the keyboard is optimized for games, the keycastr display in Parallels and on the guest should always be in sync when using the VM, but the version in the VM definitely gets stuck from time to time. It happens the most when doing mouse click-and-drag operations along with modifier keys.
This is a common problem that I have experienced for a long time. Here's the easiest way to reproduce the issue - with the VM in full screen mode, press comand+shift+4 to select an area for screenshot. After selecting an area within the Windows VM for screenshot, the shift key will be stuck in windows until the shift key or Esc key is pressed again. The "Optimize for games" recommendation above has no effect on this issue. There are other ways to reproduce this behavior, but that's the easiest one to describe here. I am also using Parallels Desktop 14 for Mac Pro Edition 14.1.3 (45485) and my guest OS is Windows 10 version 1903, build 18895.1000 (Enterprise Insider Preview)
