5 features that make Parallels Toolbox an underrated part of Parallels

Parallels is one of the only officially supported ways (by Microsoft, anyway) to run Windows on an Apple Silicon Mac. It’s easy to set up, supports ProMotion, integrates seamlessly with macOS, and even adds a feature called “Coherence” that will let your Windows apps show up as if they were regular Mac apps.

On top of all of that, having a Parallels subscription will also give you access to Parallels Toolbox, a suite of features that range from genuinely useful to gimmicky. However, there are a lot of features, and you don’t even need to be using Parallels to make use of them. These are some of the best ones that it includes.

Do note, that these require a Parallels subscription. Pretty much all of these features are available through other means, and productivity suites like Alfred will do the job for most of it. However, if you already use Parallels, then you’re doing yourself a disservice by not using Parallels Toolbox, too. Parallels Toolbox can run on both Mac and Windows, but not every feature is available on both platforms, and I’d personally only recommend using it on macOS.

5

Download videos and audio

Save files locally

One of the best parts of Parallels Toolbox is its Download Videos feature. You can simply copy the link of a video you want to download (and yes, that includes YouTube), paste it in the box, and it’ll download the video at a quality setting you select. There’s a Safari extension you can install so that you can use it on every page you use, and it’s just in general a pretty convenient way to download videos online.

On top of that, there’s another plugin called Download Audio that does the same thing. You can download audio from supported services and save them locally for playback later. It can be pretty convenient to have, especially given how easily accessible it is.

With that said, there are alternatives out there, like yt-dlp that do the exact same thing. However, the Download Videos plugin in Parallels Toolbox is quick and easy, especially if you don’t feel comfortable using a command-line to use those tools. Plus, it’s integrated into the system (and your browser if you use Safari), so it’s always accessible if you need it.

4

Recognize text

OCR, though there are better tools out there

There are a number of ways to use Optical Character Recognition on your Mac or PC, but Parallels Toolbox has a built in tool called “Recognize text” that you can use to pull text straight from an image. While you need to have the image saved on your computer (and not just on your clipboard, say, from a screenshot), it can accurately detect the text and give you it.

I personally prefer to use a tool like OCR in Alfred to do this, but if you haven’t paid for the Alfred Powerpack (and you have Parallels Toolbox already), this feature can be incredibly useful. There have been a lot of times where I’ve needed to pull text from an image, and if I wasn’t already using an alternative that I paid for, I know I’d get a decent bit of use out of this feature.

3

Fully uninstall applications

Including leftover files

Uninstalling applications on Mac is typically as simple as selecting the application and deleting it, but most applications leave some bits behind. There are tools out there that you can drag and drop the application onto and it will then find the remnant files and remove those too, but Parallels Toolbox actually has a pretty good tool to do it, too.

What’s great about it is it will scan all of the applications you have on your computer, and by default, list them in order of storage used. However, it calculates the storage used based on the actual data associated with the application, not just the application itself. AppCleaner is one of the go-to applications for this that you can get, but the difference is that AppCleaner won’t list all of the applications for you, so you still have to do the manual part of finding out what’s eating up your storage.

2

Clean drive and find duplicates

Save some space

Is your drive filled with random files that you don’t even know about? Parallels Toolbox has a featured called “Clean drive” which can scan your entire drive to find files to remove, mostly relating to your trash, your cache, and log files. You can make it scan other things too, but the point is that you can claw back some space if you really need to.

On top of that, there’s also a “Find duplicates” tool that you can use to drag and drop folders onto. It will then scan those folders for duplicate files, and you can then decide what to do with them after. Sometimes duplicates are needed, but other times you might just not be aware you even have them in the first place.

1

Batch convert and resize images

Make everything consistent

If you have a lot of images you want to make be the same format and resolution, there’s a tool called “Resize images” in Parallels Toolbox that will let you do exactly that. You drag and drop the images that you want to resize, and you then pick the resolution and the format that you want to convert them to.

This isn’t always useful, and it depends on what you’re working on as to whether or not it’s a tool you can make use of. However, if you work with a lot of images and want to make them similar sizes or change their format, it’s a surprisingly simplistic tool that I recommend giving a try.