Parallels 4 CMD+W Conflict Solution
Last night, I installed Parallels Desktop 4 on my Macbook Pro. After installing, I found out the hard way that the Parallels team made an inane decision to set CMD+W as a keyboard shortcut to shut down a virtual machine.
In Windows, CMD+W is used to close windows in both applications and the OS. It's an extremely common shortcut, I use it constantly throughout the day. By contrast, the Parallels shortcut CMD+W shuts down a virtual machine, which is not recommended by Parallels themselves. You should always shut down Windows yourself using its own shutdown command in the Start Menu. Why they decided to make a keyboard shortcut to do this thing that you shouldn't do anyway is beyond me, and why they chose to make it one of the most common keyboard shortcuts in Windows is even more perplexing.
The solution is to remap the Close Window command to another keyboard combination. With Parallels running, open your OSX Keyboard Shortcuts preferences, scroll down to the bottom until you find Parallels Desktop.app. Select it, and press the + button. Type "Close Window" and assign it to some other keyboard command. I used CMD+ALT+CONTROL+SHIFT+W, since I will never use this command ever.
Posted in Rants, Technology, Workflow
November 13th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
You can also change it from within Parallels.
With Parallels as your active program, go to "Parallels Desktop" in the menu bar, then choose "Preferences". In the window that opens choose "Keyboard & Mouse" from the left-hand menu and then just uncheck the box next to "Cmd+W" under the list for "Virtual Machine Shortcuts".
Now if you hit CMD+W when Parallels is active, it'll pop up a notification window asking you what you'd like to do with your VM instead of automatically closing it.
I agree, should not have been set as the default, but an easy work-around.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
What you're suggesting doesn't work. Assigning a keyboard shortcut to CMD+W in Parallels has zero effect because Parallels owns CMD+W. The irony is CMD+W is one of the preset shortcuts they provide, but it doesn't actually get handled by Windows, it's hijacked by Parallels.
I never said it automatically closed the VM, by the way. CMD+W brings up the dialog asking if you want to close it. In other words, CMD+W does not get passed to Windows, Parallels desktop captures the shortcut and asks you if you want to shut down your virtual machine. The expected behavior is your window in Windows gets closed.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Extremely common shortcut? I didn't know it was used commonly til today hehe. I thought it was only used in FF to close tabs…
December 15th, 2008 at 11:32 am
vmWare fusion is the only way to go. parallels draws so much juice, and then does stuff like you're describing, or just stops working.
Vmware's worth the extra couple of bucks; using it with a dual monitor sets up, I forget it's a virtual machine…
December 31st, 2008 at 12:47 am
You forget that Cmd-W is a system-wide shortcut in OS X to close the currently active window.
Parallels Desktop is an OS X application, your virtual machine running in Parallels is just another application window for OS X, even when it runs in full screen mode. Hence, by default, when you press Cmd-W, OS X thinks you want to close the currently active window, which happens to be your Windows virtual machine.
If you will go to the Parallel's preferences, to Keyboard & Mouse and will uncheck the option called "Enable Mac OS X system shortcuts" you will get the behavior that you want — Cmd-W will not close the virtual machine anymore.
Also in Windows the shortcut that you want is actually Ctrl-W, since Windows doesn't know about Mac-only Command key at all. And Ctrl-W works as expected in Parallels even when OS X shortcuts are set to have higher priority.
December 31st, 2008 at 4:03 am
@Sergey I forget nothing. I'm well aware of OSX commands, I work on OSX every day, all day. I wrote the thread on FlashDevelop's forum on common issues and solutions with FlashDevelop on Parallels.
This issue did not exist in Parallels 3. Parallels 4's keyboard management is a huge step backwards from Parallels 3. Not to mention Parallels 4's performance is far worse than its predecessor, and the sticky keys bug is something they knowingly released with, even though it's what most people consider to be a critical bug. They feigned ignorance at first, but there's no way that bug made it through QA because it happens very quickly in any given session.
Disabling Mac OS X system shortcuts is not a solution because that means you cannot use Spaces keyboard shortcuts, which basically means if you're running Parallels 4 on a MacBook Pro, you're stuck in Windows land with no easy way to get out. And CTRL+W does not work in Parallels when OS X shortcuts are disabled.