Full screen VM's always open on primary display

[raiford]

I have noticed that the last couple minor releases of VMWare Fusion 11 have a regression where full screen VM's now always open on the primary display. In previous versions, there was an attempt to open the VM full screen on the display where it previously ran.  This causes an annoying change to my typical daily workflow.  Has anyone else seen this?  Is there some way to configure this behavior?

Here is an easy way to see the behavior I'm describing:

* Open a VM full screen on a secondary display

* Press CMD+Q to pause currently running vm's and quit Fusion

* Reopen Fusion

* Double click the VM that was opened earlier

** Notice that the vm opens full screen because that is how it was shut down, but notice it has been opened on the primary display instead of the previous display.

On earlier versions of Fusion, this would open on the secondary display.  Now, one must either rearrange desktops or take the vm out of full screen mode, move the window, then enter full screen mode again.  I believe the original Fusion 11 did not have this problem, so it must have changed in 11.0.1.

Edit:  Forgot to mention, I'm seeing this on a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) running macOS Sierra 10.12.6.  I suppose it is possible a macOS change has caused this behavior change, but I seem to recall it changing immediately after installing the first Fusion 11 update.

Edit2: As stated below it turns out that something odd in my VMWare configuration caused this to happen. 

[zhus]

It can restore the Full Screen VM window on extended display in Fusion 11 (macOS10.13  15-inchMBP 2016). But I'm not sure if the behavior can be kept every time after disconnecting the monitor or restarting the host. As I known, Fusion does not have a setting to control the screen assignment when launching a Full Screen VM window.

[raiford]

Thanks for your reply.  What I'm seeing is that even during the same session (ie. monitors stay connected and macOS is not put to sleep) it is no longer able to launch on the extended display if it was paused in full screen mode.  I did not have the problem previously.  I'm not sure if it affects things, but I put the VM Library window on the same external display.  When I double click a VM in the library to resume it, it opens full screen on my laptop display instead of the external display.  Honestly I would be happy with it always opening on the same display as the VM Library. Actually this would be much more intuitive and consistent than the current and previous behavior.

Regarding multiple sessions, yes, this is understandable.  It used to reopen on the same external display if I closed Fusion before disconnecting monitors and ensured the monitors were reconnected in the same order prior to relaunching Fusion.  There are too many variables with this though and I don't expect it to be consistent.  Again, if it opened on the same window as the VM Library (or the current active monitor at the time it is launched) this would be more intuitive than the current behavior.

[raiford]

I just updated to Fusion 11.0.3 and this is still an issue.  Can I assume that VMWare has decided that this is a feature and not a problem?  This behavior is very annoying and it did not used to behave like this.  Can someone please explain the logic that decides which screen to open a VM to?  As someone that does all of my work on VM's it is frustrating to deal with this every single day.  Maybe I can define which screen VMWare should use?

I'm not sure why it won't simply open to the active screen (typically the same one that has the Virtual Machine Library window). 😕

[raiford]

So, this does not appear to be a regression after all.  This weekend I was playing with my network settings and updated my .vmx file and afterwards the VM will now open on my external monitor correctly in full screen mode.  I'm not sure what I changed either initially or this time but for now my issue has been resolved.  It would still be nice to understand the logic used to determine which display to open on.

[raiford]

Well this problem has returned again.  Would someone from VMWare be able to look at the logic that's used to determine which screen is used when resuming a full screen VM?  I would love to know what I've changed that causes this.

[raiford]

Just to close the loop on this, it seems that Fusion 11.5 has fixed this issue.  It now reopens the full screen VM on the screen where it was paused.  This is much nicer now. Thank you.