When you power up a virtual machine, you've got two computers running at once: your actual computer, and the simulated PC that's running inside it. But you've got only one mouse and keyboard! How, then, is Parallels Workstation supposed to know when a certain mouse or keyboard activity is intended for the primary OS, and when for the guest OS?
The Automatic Handoff
One obvious answer is: Whenever the cursor is inside the guest OS window, then it belongs to that OS. When the cursor moves out of the guest window, it belongs to the primary OS once again.
And indeed, that's exactly how things work if you've installed Parallels Tools as described in the previous chapter.
The Manual Handoff
But Parallels Tools are not available for all guest operating systems; furthermore, some people may prefer to trigger the keyboard/mouse handoff manually. You can use any of three methods to make the virtual machine "capture" the keyboard and mouse:
Ctrl+I
on your keyboard. Once the guest OS captures your cursor, you can't move it outside of the Parallels Workstation window until you release it.
To release the keyboard and mouse to primary OS:
Ctrl+Alt
, but you can change this key combo in the Edit -> Preferences -> Hot Keys tab.The keyboard and the mouse will be released immediately.