The disclosed embodiments provide a system that operates a computer system. During operation, the system detects a first change in a setting associated with a first computing environment executing on the computer system, wherein the first change is associated with at least one of an input/output (I/O) device setting, a regional setting, a network setting, a power setting, and a display setting. Next, the system propagates the first change to one or more other computing environments executing on the computer system.