Connecting USB Devices Directly to Your macOS Virtual Machine

Starting from version 20.3.0, Parallels Desktop for Mac allows you to connect USB devices directly to a virtual machine running macOS. For example, this may enable you to connect a USB security device to the macOS virtual machine instead of your Mac, similar to the way it works for Windows virtual machines.

Warning:

1. This functionality is only available on Macs running macOS Sequoia 15 and newer.

2. It MAY NOT WORK for your particular device. For the latest known issues, refer to this Knowledge Base article.

3. The current implementation of this feature does not support permanently assigning them to a specific virtual machine running macOS.

How to connect a USB device to your macOS virtual machine

Due to the current limitations, you will have to manually assign a USB device to the specific virtual machine running macOS. For that:

1. Ensure that your Parallels Desktop Devices Preferences are set to Ask me what to do.

2. Launch your macOS virtual machine if it isn't active yet.

3. Connect your USB device and wait for the Parallels Desktop connection dialog to appear.

   

   The Remember my choice option is inactive due to the aforementioned limitations.

4. Choose the macOS virtual machine.

How to disable connecting USB devices to a virtual machine

For security reasons, you may want to prohibit connecting USB devices to your virtual machines. Here is how you can do it using the command line interface:

prlctl set <VM ID> --device-del usb

This command will disable the USB device controller for the virtual machine. For more CLI capabilities, please review the respective section of our Developer's Guide.

Note: Parallels Desktop Command Line Interface is only available on Pro, Business, and Enterprise licenses.