VMWare Fusion 11.5.x Mouse Pointer / Text Cursor Lag

[aykay123]

For months I've been experiencing heavy mouse cursor lags with VMWare Fusion in all Windows applications when the cursor changes to text cursor (caret). It behaves precise in pointer style, but totally starts lagging on text input (e.g. Notepad, see VMWare Fusion 11.5.x Mouse Pointer / Text Cursor Lag - YouTube ). This makes it virtually impossible to e.g. select text.

The issue still exists on macOS Catalina 10.15.4 and VMWare Fusion 11.5.3, even with a clean Windows install and up-to-date VMWare tools. I'm using an external 4K screen (High DPI) and I get the feeling this is making the problem worse. Is anyone else experiencing those issues?

[edemicco]

I have the exact same issue.  It occurred in Windows 10 under Fusion 10.x as well. Curiously, I remember seeing a similar issue when I tried Parallels.

I'm also using an external 4K screen with a 2015 MacBook Pro with Intel Iris Pro running 10.14.6. I do not have "Use full resolution for retina display" selected, which seems to make it worse. All displays are running "Default for display" 2x resolution.

It's somewhat better when only using the laptop's panel or in clamshell mode with just the 4K monitor, and using an external monitor at 2560x1440 (not hi-dpi) does not exhibit the issue. The interesting thing is technically the Windows desktop is using less pixels on the 4K monitor (1920x1080 vs. 2560x1440).

I filed a ticket with VMWare support and did spend some time screensharing with them. The conclusion was they would bring it up with engineering and it may get fixed in a future release.

[aykay123]

Thank you for your reply! I am using a MacBook Pro 2018, 2,7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB.

I've enabled "Use full resolution for retina display" and if I only use the MacBook display I don't experience this problem that much either.

So a few months ago I switched to Parallels Desktop and I can report that there are no problems whatsoever. I somehow still find the Fusion interface cleaner than in Parallels and would therefore like to continue using Fusion, but currently it's not possible.

First there were the performance problems that made VMs with more than a few GB of RAM practically unusable, now the mouse pointer glitch, I am kinda disappointed with the development of Fusion (considering that the previous bug was actually Apple's fault, but Parallels had none of these issues at any time). I hope that VMWare will soon dedicate more passion and resources to the further development of Fusion.

[pgregory71]

I have the same issue, and here's a workaround that is working for me

Seems whenever VMWare fusion has to re-draw the cursor to something beyond the basic default cursor (arrow) then it slows down or fails.

So, just change your text cursor to the default arrow using these instructions and this worked like a charm for me.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-change-the-cursor-on-windows-10

Hope it helps everyone until they can fix the issue!

Phil.

[jegbook]

I had been using High Sierra with Fusion 8.5 and hadn't had any problem.

Before I recently upgraded to Catalina I upgraded to Fusion 11.5. I'm pretty sure Fusion 11.5 didn't have the cursor issue with High Sierra.

I upgraded to Catalina last week and with Fusion 11.5 have immediately experienced the cursor lag. My primary VM is a Win 10 1909 Boot Camp VM. I tested with a Win 10 1909 VM (not boot camp) as well as a Win 7 VM and both experienced the issue.

I tested changing the cursor and it totally works. Changing the scheme to black fixes it as well as even just using a different "I" beam in the default white cursor scheme resolves the issue.

Very strange!