Fusion 3 fullscreen menubar

[Bargonaut]

Is there any way to get the real Mac menubar back in a fullscreen VM with Fusion 3?

I just don't see the value of the simplified, black menubar that is now available,

and I'd prefer to have access to the missing menu items.

thanks,

Brad

[wila · Accepted solution]

Hi,

This has been brought up during the testing period and provided the following answer to this question:

This is unsupported, but try editing /Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/preferences and add the line:

fusion.showFullScreenTitleBar = "FALSE"

Hope this helps,

--

Wil

_____________________________________________________

VI-Toolkit & scripts wiki at http://www.vi-toolkit.com

[Bargonaut]

Thanks. That hidden preference does work to restore the full Mac menubar.

However, it does expose a bug in that once a menu is displayed the menubar fails to hide again.

Switching Spaces and back again does hide the menubar, so I may keep this setting.

Thanks for the solution.

-Brad

[GCWF]

I mentioned it during the testing phase, and I'll mention it again: I think the new option is a pretty poor idea. I routinely need access to information in the right side of the "real" OS X menu bar (Network status, battery level, etc.) that simply cannot be duplicated by VMware's custom approach.

While I appreciate that someone took it upon themselves to share an unsupported preferences hack that restores the previous behavior, I don't dare rely upon that for a regular workflow on a production machine. In fact, I have been running windowed since the 3.0 launch (and enduring resolution-setting woes). I'd much rather VMware continue to consider why there is a menu bar in the first place: to allow access to the critical functions of the app you're running and the larger Mac OS at the same time, whether the app is Photoshop or a VM. If I can't get to the Apple menu and Spotlight, for example, it's not a real menu bar.

[SvenGus]

I, too, think that the previous method was better (and even better, IIRC, is VirtualBox's method, also showing the OS X Dock together with the Menu Bar); at least, the new bar should not leave that residual black border when autohidden: besides unaesthetic, it's also useless, as one already knows where the bar is hidden.

[Bargonaut]

After trying the hack for a bit, it's just too annoying that the menubar often fails to hide.

I'd really like to have the menubar work like Fusion 1 and 2. The mini-bar doesn't suffice.

-BS

[nbe]

I'd much rather VMware continue to consider why there is a menu bar in the first place.

I'd mucht rather they didn't as this would kill fullscreen entirely. OS X normally doesn't support fullscreen, only zoom to content which still leaves you with a windowed vm. OS X is drag & drop oriented and thus does not really support fullscreen. When running the vm's fullscreen you can see why OS X doesn't support it: it's hard to drag & drop something from the desktop to the vm because the vm takes up all the screen. You might get around it by using spaces: switch to a different space and drag what you want to drag and drop it on the Fusion dock icon and let Dock Exposé do the rest.

It might be a good option if you could choose set the fullscreen behaviour to the old v1/v2 way of doing it or the new v3 one, with the v3 one as the default. This way the user decides

BTW: with the hack I was only able to get the menubar to show up, not the dock as it previously did and the way Microsoft's RDP Mac client does.

[lukeandrews]

Count me as another person who finds the new menubar significantly worse from the old one. I don't see any advantage to this new version.

[CuriosCat]

I for one really like the new menu bar. It lets me use Gnome and other environments with a top menu bar in the guest OS without having the @#&$&@#$ OS X menu bar obscuring my guest OS.

Please, VMware, whatever you do, don't go back to the way things were.

[admin]

In addition to not obscuring guest menu/titlebars like the old fullscreen menu did, the new menu is also repositionable along different sides (useful for Mac OS guests). Both features were not possible with the old style, this was not an arbitrary change.

People have raised some good points about menulets and so on, and we'll take them into consideration for the future.

[lukeandrews]

I find the repositioning on the left and right pretty odd -- it's completely non-standard UI to have sideways menu items like that. It would be another thing if it were just icons, but as is, it's just bizarre.

The main thing is, though, there are clearly many of us who prefer the old behaviour. Can you make it an option? And/or fix the bug with using the hidden preference?

[EasyNT]

I doubt that this is a bug, it's working here like a charm as Fusion 2 did. I'd say VMWare should only make this unsupported line a supported one with an option in the settings and we're all happy campers...

[Cebulon]

I just upgraded to Fusion3. And one of the first things happend, that I was missing the ability to access the mac-menubar by moving the cursor to the top of the screen. :_| The new VM-menubar is irritating and not needed at all. We already have an menubar: the mac-manubar. Esp. if you need the plugins at the right side of the menubar.

So, PLEASE, give us the used behaviour back again. Please.

I used the mentioned change in the preferences. It works fine. Please make it an option in the configuratin-dialog. Thanks.

Also: The VMware menubar plugin was a superb idea. Thanks for that, it's cool. :smileycool: