Introducing Parallels Toolbox 4.5 for Mac and Windows
“Same great tools, in a new, easier-to-use interface.”
A lot has happened since Parallels® Toolbox was first released in 2016:
- The Mac went through six major releases: El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina and Big Sur.
- The number of tools in Parallels Toolbox has more than doubled.
- Parallels Toolbox for Windows was released.
- The Parallels Toolbox for Mac was made a “universal binary”, supporting the new Mac computers with the Apple M1 chip.
While all these milestones are important, the number of tools more than doubling caused the Parallels Toolbox developers to realize that a user interface change was needed. What was an excellent interface for 20 tools wasn’t as excellent for more than 45 tools. So, rather than add more tools to the latest release, an interface update became the focus for Parallels Toolbox 4.5. (See Figure 1 and Video 1.)
While the new interface was the focus for the development team’s time, several tools were also improved in this release:
- Time tools (Alarm, Date Countdown, Timer) now supports multiple events.
- Download Video now supports downloading subtitles along with video files.
In the new user interface for Parallels Toolbox 4.5, you can customize your own subset of tools, and these are shown in the Dashboard. (If you forget to add a tool that you have recently used, it will still be shown below the Dashboard in the Recent tools, as shown in Figure 2.) In Video 1, for my Dashboard, I chose Capture Area, Download Video, and Make GIF. Let me know in the comments which tools you have put in your Dashboard.
Remember that if you have a subscription to Parallels Desktop for Mac, you also have a subscription to Parallels Toolbox for your Mac, and a subscription to Parallels Toolbox for Windows for each of your Windows virtual machines–both at no charge.
Download a trial of the latest version of Parallels Toolbox for Mac and Windows.
