Fusion 13 and Tech Preview - Background Items Added Notification

[Mohannad]

Every time I start VMWare Fusion I get this notification. I have tried to toggle access off and on and nothing seems to stop this message from showing up. Please see the attached image.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

[Technogeezer]

Known issue. The message is informational, and nothing to worry about. It's annoying however, to have to dismiss it every time you start Fusion.

There is a post in the forum with a "workaround" that will stop this message from appearing each time you start Fusion. However it's a hack and only masks the issue. The issue that VMware has to address is that Fusion has not been updated to take advantage of new, more secure methods introduced in Ventura for defining background tasks.  These changes were done in Ventura to improve security of the OS (to let you know that something dumped a new startup item into system locations - a tactic used by malware).

Fusion uses an older, deprecated mechanism for defining its background items to macOS. It places items in the system's /Library/LaunchDaemons folder each time Fusion starts, and removes them when you exit Fusion. (A questionable practice in general if you ask me). The creating of the items when Fusion starts is what causes Ventura to generate that message.  

[SvenGus]

Strangely (could perhaps have to do with having updated to Ventura 13.5?), today this notification “automagically” disappeared, and didn’t return in subsequent Fusion Tech Preview 2023 launches: strange, but true (and with no workaround hacks applied)…

[Mohannad]

I am surprised that this fairly obvious issue with Fusion has not been fixed for almost a year. 

Sadly for me, the issue persists. 

[SvenGus]

Maybe it could have to do with showing the menu bar item - which BTW hasn’t been updated for a long time (still no dark mode, for example) - only when Fusion is running…? After installing the Tech Preview, I switched to that setting (once it was the recommended one, with two “parallel” Fusion installations)…

Edit: Today, it started to appear again; so, nothing to do with the menu item setting. Well, we’ll just have to wait for a fix…

[Technogeezer]

It would not surprise me if this is a low priority item.I’d like to see it fixed, but In the grand scheme of things this is an annoyance and in no way impacts how Fusion runs. There are other areas that I prefer they spend time on if there needs to be resource allocation decisions made. 

[JamieLincs]

I noticed a change with Ventura 13.5 too. From what I can tell, it will show the message once per boot of the machine and then if dismissed, will not show again on subsquent restarts of Fusion until you next restart your computer. So an improvement, but still annoying for something that should be marked as safe somehow.

[TECH198]

The workaround is there though and only has to be done 'once'

- Click "Go" menu, and "Go to Folder" (or hold Shift-Command+G)

- Type, or copy : /Library/LaunchDeamons

- Copy all vmware.plist files to /Library/LaunchAgents

- Re-launch Vmware Fusion.

It should be fixed. but i'm happy just knowing there is a workaround for it. Its not like you have to constantly do the above.

[Technogeezer]

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@JamieLincs wrote:

I noticed a change with Ventura 13.5 too. From what I can tell, it will show the message once per boot of the machine and then if dismissed, will not show again on subsquent restarts of Fusion until you next restart your computer. So an improvement, but still annoying for something that should be marked as safe somehow.

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There does seem to be a change with 13.5, but I can reliably reproduce the message appearing between system boots. Just launch Fusion, dismiss the message, exit Fusion, wait a couple of minutes, then launch Fusion again. The message will reappear.

The check for new background items in Ventura seems to be on some kind of schedule.

Fusion does need to be changed to deal with the new behavior of macOS’s new handling of background items in Ventura. 

[Mohannad]

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@TECH198 wrote:

The workaround is there though and only has to be done 'once'

- Click "Go" menu, and "Go to Folder" (or hold Shift-Command+G)

- Type, or copy : /Library/LaunchDeamons

- Copy all vmware.plist files to /Library/LaunchAgents

- Re-launch Vmware Fusion.

It should be fixed. but i'm happy just knowing there is a workaround for it. Its not like you have to constantly do the above.

I thought this worked but as the poster below you had mentioned, wait a few minutes then restart the app and you get the same message. Ah well...

[ColoradoMarmot]

I'd avoid doing that - it could interfere with upgrades if you forget to undo it before hand.  Just click the message away until VMWare gets the bug fixed.

[JamieLincs]

@Technogeezer Spot on - I obviously hadn't left it long enough and gone back in before. I do hope they fix this.

[JamieLincs]

Thank you @Mohannad, I had come across that suggestion, though I agree with @ColoradoMarmot - also, LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons are not the same thing and have different security and access ramifications. I couldn't say with any confidence if the VMware Daemons will have all they need whilst running as an Agent. Hopefully they'll find a way to safely make this go away in a future release.