Parallels 20 breaks Shared Folders in macOS VMs

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xmd

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See also Shared Folders not showing up


I just upgraded to Parallels 20.0.1 on my Intel mac (macOS 14.7) and now my shared folders aren't working on my macOS VMs either. Windows VMs: Shared folders working normally.
Steps I took:
* On the host mac: I tried removing then re-adding "Documents folder" permissions for Parallels Desktop from System Settings / Privacy and Security / Files and Folders: No change.
* on the mac VMs: Reinstalling Parallels Tools on the VM and rebooting multiple times: No change.
* On the host mac: I tried adding "Full Disk Access" permissions for Parallels Desktop from System Settings / Privacy and Security pane. No change.

This is clearly a Parallels bug, and a serious one - without Shared Folders my workflow is dead.
 
I was able to restore Shared Folder by reverting to Parallels Desktop 19.4.1:
* on Host mac, use Time Machine backup to restore Parallels 19.4.1
* restart host mac
* launch parallels, give permission for extension
* restart again
* open the macOS VM
* From host, use Actions menu, choose "Reinstall Parallels Tools"
* restart the VM

After this, I'm back to functional Shared Folders again.
 
I am having a similar issue after upgrading to Parallels Desktop Pro 20. In my case it is Ubuntu Linux VMs that have lost write access to shared folders located on my Mac's internal hard drive. The attached USB 3 SSD drive, which I have also shared via PSF has not been affected. That disk has an exFAT filesystem as opposed to the APFS formatted internal drive for what it's worth but I have no idea if that's relevant to this issue.

I noticed that the group membership of the shared folders that have become Read-Only when viewed from Linux is "nogroup" whereas the folder upon which the shared external drive is mounted is my user account group. I am unable to change this with sudo chgrp on the linux side and giving "everyone" Read/Write on the Mac side changes nothing. It is rather annoying but not so much that I'm willing to go through the downgrade process. Sigh.
 
I'm experiencing a similar issue after upgrading to Parallels Desktop Pro 20. In my case, Ubuntu Linux VMs have lost write access to shared folders on my Mac's internal hard drive. Interestingly, an attached USB 3 SSD drive shared through PSF remains unaffected. This drive is formatted with an exFAT filesystem, whereas the internal drive uses APFS. I'm unsure if this difference is relevant to the problem, but I'd appreciate any insights.
 
I'm running into this same problem with a Ubuntu 22 VM since updating Parallels. The shared Mac folders are no longer writable from Ubuntu.
Parallels Desktop 20 for Mac Pro Edition Version 20.1.1 (55740)
Mac OS Sonoma 14.5
 
Agreed. Done with Parallels. It has become garbage software.

I've spent ages trying to get a bridged network to work again, to no avail. In the end I plugged in a USB NIC into the host machine and shared the device with the guest machine to let macOS manage its own network connection.

That didn't solve the broken shares though. I've attempted a tonne of different things, granting Parallels full disk access, granting the guest.app full disk access, creating disk images (APFS and ExFAT) and attempting to share those, trying to share external drives (APFS, HFS+, ExFAT). Nothing worked using the Parallels shared folders options.

I ended up using normal shared folders on the host, aka, used macOS to share the folders to my entire network, and then had the guest access those shares via the network. It's a pain since the shares don't persist across reboots, but they'll last long enough for me to migrate to a better system than Parallels.

I've spent thousands of $ on Parallels over the years (started with 1.0), but it's more of a liability than a solution nowadays. Good bye.
 
Similar problem that is really a blocker for me too ...

Using Parallels Desktop for Mac Version 20.3.0 on an Ubuntu 24.04 vm.

Shared folders are created and are visible in the guest VM but are hopelessly empty and do not reflect the contents of what's in the associated host folder.
Also tried reinstalling Parallels Tools several times, even tried creating the shared folder with the CLI (prlctl) but to no avail

Anybody?
 
I also have this problem. Parallels 20 on macOS with an Ubuntu 25 VM. Empty "Desktop" folder and I have to put in the Ubuntu user password but then it doesn't work. Pasting a file into it does nothing. What a joke. Why did I even bother upgrading to 20?
 
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