X
Business
Why you can trust ZDNET : ZDNET independently tests and researches products to bring you our best recommendations and advice. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. Our process

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?

ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.

When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.

Close

Must-have Mac/PC utility gets better: Parallels Toolbox 4.5

I have a small number of utilities that I use pretty much every day, whether I'm on a PC or Mac. Parallels Toolbox is one of those, and it just got a lot better.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Senior Contributing Editor

I have a few apps and utilities that I use almost daily, and one of those is Parallels Toolbox. Whether I'm on my Mac or on a PC, this suite of up to 45 time-saving tools (the number varied depending on whether you're running it on Windows 10 or MacOS) has become one of my go-to tools.

And it just got better.

Parallels Toolbox 4.5 for PCs, M1 and Intel Macs

Parallels Toolbox is a suite of easy-to-use tools that streamlines all routine computing chores that you do many times a day and turns them into actions you can carry out with a click or two, massively boosting productivity.

With the release of Parallels Toolbox 4.5, the suite now supports M1-powered Macs. It also introduced a revamped interface and the addition of a customizable dashboard.

The customizable dashboard is particularly nice because one of the downsides of having such a broad suite of tools is that it can be tricky to find the tool that you're looking for. The new update adds categories and a search feature as well as the ability to pin tools to the dashboard with just a click.

And there are a lot of tools to choose from. including screen capture tools, image resizing tools, free memory, tools for downloading videos from the internet, world time, unit converter, and much more.

If you want to check out all the features, here are video playlists for Windows and MacOS that demo the features.

Parallels Toolbox 4.5 for Windows and Mac are available today as standalone products. Each annual license includes free updates of new and enhanced tools as they become available over the year, and costs $19.99 per year.

Editorial standards