Parallels Desktop for Mac is a hypervisor providing hardware virtualization for Mac computers. It is developed by Parallels, a subsidiary of Corel.

Parallels was initially developed for Macintosh systems with Intel processors, with version 16.5 introducing support for Macs with Apple silicon.

Microsoft officially endorses the use of Parallels Desktop for running Windows 11 on Apple silicon Macs.

Released on June 15, 2006, it was the first software product to bring mainstream virtualization to Macintosh computers utilizing the Apple–Intel architecture (earlier software products ran PC software in an emulated environment).

Its name initially was 'Parallels Workstation for Mac OS X', which was consistent with the company's corresponding Linux and Windows products. This name was not well received within the Mac community, where some felt that the name, particularly the term “workstation,” evoked the aesthetics of a Windows product. Parallels agreed: “Since we've got a great Mac product, we should make it look and sound like a Mac product...”, it was therefore renamed ‘Parallels Desktop for Mac’.

On January 10, 2007, Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac was awarded “Best in Show” at MacWorld 2007.

Parallels Desktop for Mac is a hardware emulation virtualization software, using hypervisor technology that works by mapping the host computer's hardware resources directly to the virtual machine's resources. Each virtual machine thus operates identically to a standalone computer, with virtually all the resources of a physical computer. Because all guest virtual machines use the same hardware drivers irrespective of the actual hardware on the host computer, virtual machine instances are highly portable between computers. For example, a running virtual machine can be stopped, copied to another physical computer, and restarted.

Parallels Desktop for Mac is able to virtualize a full set of standard PC hardware, including