Magic Mouse 2 scroll lag/jumps in macOS VM (Terminal/TextEdit/System Settings/Chrome)

J

JackZ3

Bit poster
Hi everyone,

I'm seeing consistent scroll lag/jumping with an Apple Magic Mouse 2, but only inside a macOS VM in Parallels Desktop. Scrolling on the host macOS is normal.

Environment
Host machine: Mac Studio (M2)
Host OS: macOS Sequoia 15.7.3
Mouse: Apple Magic Mouse 2 (Lightning)
Parallels Desktop: 26.2.0 (57363)
VM display mode: Full Screen

Guest / VM
Tested with two macOS VMs:

  • macOS Sequoia 15.7.3 (VM)

  • macOS Tahoe 26.2 (VM)
Parallels Tools is installed and updated to the latest version in both VMs.

Issue
Inside the macOS VM, scrolling with the Magic Mouse is laggy and "jumpy" in several apps:

  • Laggy/jumpy: Terminal, TextEdit, System Settings, Chrome

  • Seems normal: Safari
Behavior: with small/slow scroll gestures, the content often doesn't move (or moves only slightly). If I keep scrolling faster, it suddenly "catches up" with large jumps. Scrolling fast improves the behavior; slow/small scrolling is the worst.

This is 100% reproducible.

Steps to reproduce
  1. Start the macOS VM (Sequoia 15.7.3 or Tahoe 26.2).

  2. Open Terminal and output enough text to allow scrolling (e.g., ~100+ lines).

  3. Use small/slow scroll gestures on the Magic Mouse.

  4. Observe little/no movement, then sudden large jumps when scrolling faster.
What I've tried
  • Changed Scrolling speed in the guest macOS settings (both higher and lower) → no change.

  • No third-party mouse/scrolling utilities installed on host or guest.
Parallels settings notes
  • I could not find any macOS-VM-specific mouse configuration options (unlike Windows VMs, which show options like mouse optimization).

  • The closest related option I found is in Parallels Desktop Preferences → Shortcuts → macOS System Shortcuts, where "Send macOS system shortcuts" is set to Auto. (This appears to be keyboard/gesture shortcut routing, but I'm mentioning it for completeness.)
Has anyone seen this with Magic Mouse + macOS guests, or knows a recommended workaround/setting to try?

Thanks!
 
I have been seeing this same behavior as well, and it is driving me crazy! I like your format, so I'm borrowing that template to share my details.
Environment
Host machine: MacBook Pro M4 Pro
Host OS: macOS Tahoe 26.2
Mouse: Trackpad
Parallels Desktop (Pro): 26.2.1 (57371)
VM display mode: Full Screen or Windowed - same behavior for both

Guest / VM
-- Only tested with (1) macOS VM - macOS Tahoe 26.2
-- CPU & Memory set to automatic, but also tried manually allocating CPU cores and memory in several combinations. Did not make any difference for the scrolling issue.
-- Parallels Tools latest. Reinstalled numerous times for good measure.

Behavior: two-finger scrolling with the trackpad is laggy and "jumpy" in several apps. Using small/slow scroll gestures, the content often doesn't move (or moves only slightly).
  • Laggy/jumpy: Finder, Adobe Lightroom, Chrome, TextEdit, Terminal, System Settings, Chrome
If I keep scrolling faster, it sometimes starts scrolling at a normal speed (doesn't seem to be the same "catch up" behavior @JackZ3 reported). Usually I just try scrolling like normal. If it doesn't respond/only moves the content slightly, I try scrolling normally again. By the 3rd or 4th time, it seems to start working again until I am done scrolling. Then the next time I scroll again, it takes several attempts before it will start going.
 
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