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jmuheim
Contributor
Contributor

How to give focus to the guest OS without a mouse?

I'm a keyboard only user, and I have problems giving the focus to the guest OS within VMware Player on Windows (and also on VMware Fusion on OSX).

What can I do to give the focus to the guest OS **without** using a mouse?

Thank you.

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3 Replies
sadiq1435
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi jmuhiem

You can use Ctrl+Alt Keys to switch between Guest OS and Host Machine .

Regards

Sadiq

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huxiang
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello,

Welcome to Workstation Community!

By default, you can use [Ctrl + G] hotkey to grab focus to the guest OS and use [Ctrl + Alt] hotkey to ungrab focus.

Hope it helps.

Regards,

Shawn

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PCH2019
Contributor
Contributor

I had the same question and I just found the answer. Frequently I'll switch back and forth between a running VM and my Mac OS. When I switch back to the VM, sometimes I get focus on the app running in the VM, sometimes on the Fusion app's Toolbar. It is inconsistent. If I'm in a hurry, I might forget to check to see which app has focus, and try to close the window of the app in the VM, only to shut down the VM. This is annoying and it is time-consuming to start the VM up again and adjust the window sizes of Fusion and the apps running within. I did this again just now so I decided to try and prevent this. I couldn't find anything online so I took a closer look at what was happening. The focus is sometimes on the Fusion Toolbar and closing a window will shut down (suspend) Fusion itself. So I set Fusion's 'View->Hide Toolbar' and that solves the problem. Now when I go back, the current VM's window has focus, not Fusion. I still have to press a key to gain access to the app that has focus, but that's expected. I don't know if I will have to reset 'View->Hide Toolbar' next time but that's a minor consideration.

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