How to switch between multiple full-screen RDP sessions?

Question

I run Windows 10 locally on my Mac via Parallels. All my work is done on remote RDPs clients (normally VMs) which are typically running Windows 7 or Windows 10.

I might have open at the same time my main development machine, an application server and a DB server. I always use them full-screen and need to jump between them constantly.

I can never find a good way to tab through these multiple full-screen sessions. ALT+TAB is captured by the RDP session and Googling isn't throwing up anything useful - loads of articles about RDP shortcuts but not this particular question.

Is there a keyboard shortcut to let me run alt-tab on the machine running all the RDP sessions, so I can toggle between them? Or some other solution (like virtual desktops or something) to have the same effect?

Answer 1

Not sure if you really need the W10 machine in Parallels or if you are using it just to connect remotely to the other machines. If you need it just to connect to the remote machines, maybe the Mac itself has some tool to connect remotely using RDP protocol that has the feature you need?

Anyway, let's say you need/want to work in the local W10 (Parallel) and from it you want to connect to the other remote machines, I suggest you to install in this W10 the (free) software called Remote Desktop Manager

Once you installed it, you can configure in it all your remote machines and get remote control of all of them, yes it uses windows remote desktop, and yes, you can keep all of them opened alltogether.

Then from the "session" menu you can set the "Fullscreen" mode. Let's say you are in full screen connected to the first remote machine, you can press CTRl-ALT-rightcursor , a menu will appear for quickly change the session you want to see between the opened sessions (your remote machines connected), everything using the keyboard, you don't need to use the mouse, so it's very quick.

This is not exactly what you asked but it should be quite fine for your needs I think.

The only problem is if then you also want to switch to the Parallel W10 to work in it, because it is not part of the remote machines sessions so you cannot select it with the key combination, in that case you would click the minimize icon in the Remote Desktop Connection Manager app to show your W10 machine.

That said I never used Parallels so I'm not sure if it will interfere in some way with my idea, that I tested in a full windows environment, without virtualizations.