Has anyone succeeded in getting VMWare Workstation (Pro 17) to recognize /dev/ttyUSB0 (a USB-to-serial adapter) as a serial port?

My machine has no serial ports, so I am trying to use a USB-to-serial adapter. It is detected and should be working as ttyUSB0.

However, VM settings for the serial port show no serial ports at all in the dropdown.

I found an old post (from 2013) that gives a solution, but that doesn´t seem to work anymore.
The VM boots, no warnings about serial port not found, but there is no communication.

When I apply that solution, boot the VM, start an application that uses the port, and then check if VMWare is using the port (sudo ls -l /proc/[0-9]*/fd/* | grep tty), no process is  using ttyUSB0, all it shows is the UI using /dev/tty0 and for some reason Google Chrome is using /dev/tty2.

BTW, the guest doesn´t support USB, so I can´t hook it up there.