Parallels Desktop 16 launched on the Mac today.

It's the latest major release of the software used by developers and others to run Windows, Linux, and macOS applications and virtual machines under macOS.

While Big Sur support is the flagship feature here, there's a laundry list of small improvements in this release. For example, Parallels Desktop 16 supports 3D in Metal applications when running a macOS Big Sur virtual machine on a macOS Big Sur host.

Printers can be shared between host and virtual machines across operating systems, and support has been added for zoom and rotate gestures on multitouch trackpads for Windows apps that have zoom/rotation functionality.

Parallels Desktop 16 also promises faster performance than the previous version; it claims to launch twice as fast and offer a 20 percent improvement in DirectX performance, as well as 75 percent faster "git status" in Linux virtual machines. Support for newer versions of OpenGL has expanded which Windows apps will run in a virtual machine via Parallels.

Pro Edition users can now name their custom networks, and they can export virtual machines in a compressed format that Parallels claims are a fraction their precompression size. Also, Parallels has launched a plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio to simplify testing on different OSes.

Parallels Desktop 16 will be available starting today.