Parallels Desktop 6 For Mac System Requirements

Desktop

Parallels Desktop 14 System Requirements are fully listed below. We encourage users to read them thoroughly to understand the capabilities prior to downloading or buying our product. Users may be pleasantly surprised at the incredible performance of Windows, Linux, and other popular operating systems on their Mac® with Parallels Desktop.

Parallels Desktop 14 system requirements includes a minimium of 4GB of RAM, although a suggestion of 8GB of RAM is recommended. Plus, find a full list of. 700 MB or hard-drive space for Parallels Desktop installation, plus space to allocate to your virtual machine Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard or later/ Mac OS X 10.6.7 Snow Leopard or later/ Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or later.

Hardware:

Check your Mac hardware to ensure you can run Parallels Desktop without experiencing future issues. We’d love to make sure you get the most out of Parallels Desktop and the virtual machines you create.

  • A Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9, Intel Core M, or Xeon processor.
  • Minimum 4 GB of memory—8 GB is what we recommend. This will improve general performance, especially if you intend to use resource-heavy tasks within the virtual machine, such as gaming, 3D, or CAD.
  • 600 MB of disk space on the boot volume (Macintosh HD) for Parallels Desktop application installation.
  • Additional disk space for virtual machines. (Varies on desired operating system and applications installed, e.g. at least 16 GB of disk space is required for Windows 10.)
  • SSD drive is recommended for better performance.
  • Internet connection for product activation, select features, and future updates.

macOS Minimum Requirements to run Parallels Desktop:

  • macOS Mojave 10.14
  • macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 or later
  • macOS Sierra 10.12.6 or later
  • OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 or later

Guest Operating Systems Supported as Virtual Machines within Parallels Desktop:

  • Windows 10
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 8
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Windows 7 (SP0-SP1)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP0-SP2)
  • Windows Vista Home, Business, Ultimate, Enterprise (SP0-SP2)
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 (SP0-SP2)
  • Windows XP (SP0-SP3)
  • Windows 2000 Professional SP4
  • Windows 2000 Server SP4
  • MS-DOS 6.22*
  • Boot2Docker
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7, 6, 5
  • CentOS Linux 7, 6, 5
  • Fedora Linux 28, 27, 26
  • Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, 17.10, 16.04 LTS, 14.04 LTS, 12.04 LTS
  • Debian GNU/Linux 9.4, 9, 8, 7
  • Suse Linux Enterprise 12 SP3, 11 SP3, 11 SP2
  • openSUSE Linux 15, 42.3, 13.2, 13.1, 12.3
  • Linux Mint 19, 18, 17
  • Kali 2018.2, 2018.1, 2
  • Elementary 0.4
  • Manjaro 17
  • Mageia 6, 5, 4, 3
  • Gentoo Linux*
  • Solaris 11.3, 11, 10*
  • openBSD 6*
  • FreeBSD 11.1, 10, 10, 9, 8*
  • openVZ 7
  • eComStation 2, 1.2*
  • ReactOS 0.4*
  • Android OS**
  • macOS Mojave 10.14.x
  • macOS High Sierra 10.13.x
  • macOS Sierra 10.12.x
  • OS X El Capitan 10.11.x
  • OS X Yosemite 10.10.x
  • OS X Mavericks 10.9.x
  • OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.x
  • OS X Lion 10.7.x
  • OS X Lion Server 10.7.x
  • Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6.x
  • Mac OS X Leopard Server 10.5.x

*Parallels Tools are not available for this operating system.

**Only the one downloaded with help of Installation Assistant.

Note: Parallels Desktop for Mac emulates PC hardware, so operating systems that are not present in this list can work as well. They are not on the list because our engineers have not tested them in our lab yet, or we found some critical issues and cannot confirm compatibility.

You can download the Parallels Desktop trial and install an operating system of your choice. If it doesn’t work and you believe it should be supported, let us know at Parallels Forum.

Need to migrate your PC to a virtual machine in Parallels Desktop?

  • 700 MHz (or higher) x86 or x64 processor (Intel or AMD)
  • 256 MB of RAM
  • 50 MB of available hard disk space for installation of Parallels Transporter Agent
  • Ethernet or WiFi network adapter for migrating over network
  • External USB drive for migrating via external disk
  • Supported Windows: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000

Parallels Desktop 6 For Mac Download

Note: Virtual machines that were created in Parallels Desktop 3 or 4 and never run in any other version are not going to work in Parallels Desktop 14.

Need to Buy Microsoft Windows 10? Buy below and get started in minutes:

Parallels Desktop for Mac Trial Download

Parallels Desktop is the #1 award-winning solution for running Windows on Mac for over 10 years. Are you curious to see if your specific non-Mac application can run through Parallels Desktop? Try it out for yourself—download a free 14-day trial.

Happy virtualizing! Feel free to reach out to our team on Twitter @ParallelsCares or Facebook @ParallelsInc if you have any additional questions or concerns. We’re happy to help!

Parallels

System Requirements for Parallels Desktop 15

Supported Mac Configurations

Parallels Desktop 13 For Mac Download

Minimum
To run most applications such as Microsoft Office, accounting, trading, SAP, Matlab and more
Best Performance
For graphics-intensive applications, high loads and running multiple virtual machines
ProcessorIntel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9, Intel Core M or Xeon processorIntel Core i5, Core i7, Core i9 or Xeon processor
Memory4 GB of RAM16 GB of RAM or more
Storage500 MB for Parallels Desktop application installation
Additional disk space for the guest operating system (at least 16 GB is required for Windows 10)
SSD drive
GraphicsIntel, AMD Radeon or NVIDIAAMD Radeon Pro graphics card
Operating SystemmacOS Catalina 10.15 (when released)
macOS Mojave 10.14
macOS High Sierra 10.13
macOS Sierra 10.12
macOS Catalina 10.15 (when released)
DirectX 11 requires at least macOS Mojave 10.14 but works best on macOS 10.15 Catalina.
Internet connection is required for product activation, updates and select features.
Parallels Desktop 6 For Mac System Requirements

Guest Operating Systems

  • Windows 10
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 8
  • Windows Server 2019
  • Windows Server 2016
  • Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Windows 7 (SP0-SP1)
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP0-SP2)
  • Windows Vista Home, Business, Ultimate and Enterprise (SP0-SP2)
  • Windows Server 2003 R2 (SP0-SP2)
  • Windows XP (SP0-SP3)
  • Windows 2000 Professional SP4
  • Windows 2000 Server SP4
  • Boot2Docker
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7 and 6
  • CentOS Linux 7 and 6
  • Fedora Linux 30 * and 29
  • Ubuntu 19.04, 18.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS
  • Debian GNU/Linux 9 and 8
  • Suse Linux Enterprise 15
  • OpenSUSE Linux 15.1 and 15
  • Linux Mint 19 and 18
  • Kali 2019 and 2018
  • Elementary 5
  • Manjaro 18
  • Mageia 7 and 6
  • Gentoo Linux **
  • Solaris 11 and 10 **
  • openBSD 6 **
  • FreeBSD 12 and 11 **
  • openVZ 7
  • eComStation 2 and 1.2 **
  • ReactOS 0.4 **
  • Android OS*
  • macOS Catalina 10.15 (when released)
  • macOS Mojave 10.14.x
  • macOS High Sierra 10.13.x
  • macOS Sierra 10.12.x
  • OS X El Capitan 10.11.x
  • OS X Yosemite 10.10.x
  • OS X Mavericks 10.9.x
  • OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.x
  • OS X Lion 10.7.x
  • OS X Lion Server 10.7.x
  • Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server 10.6.x
  • Mac OS X Leopard Server 10.5.x
  • and many more...
  • * — Only the version downloaded with help of the Installation Assistant with Parallels Desktop.
    ** — Parallels Tools are not available for this operating system.
See all supported guest operating systems

Note: Parallels Desktop for Mac emulates PC hardware, so operating systems that are not present in this list can work as well. They are not on the list because we didn't test them in our lab yet or we found some critical issues. You can download the Parallels Desktop trial and install an operating system of your choice. If it doesn't work and you believe it should be supported, let us know at Parallels Forum.
Parallels Tools for Linux require X Window System version 1.15–1.20 and Linux Kernel version 2.6.29–5.1.

Moving Your PC?

PC system requirements to move your PC to your Mac (using Parallels Transporter Agent):

  • 700 MHz (or higher) x86 or x64 processor (Intel or AMD)
  • 256 MB of RAM
  • 50 MB of available hard disk space for installation of Parallels Transporter Agent
  • Ethernet or WiFi network adapter for migrating over network
  • External USB drive for migrating via external disk
  • Supported Windows: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 *
  • * — To migrate Windows Vista or older, Transporter Agent from Parallels Desktop 13 should be used. Download the Parallels Transporter Agent.