Accessibility bug: Zoomed cursors + Mac guest OSs

[AviDrissman]

I use zoomed cursors from accessibility, and they don’t work properly with Mac guest OSs.

Host OS: 10.14.6

VMWare Fusion: 11.5

Guest OS: Seen at least with Catalina with Tools installed

Repro:

1. Host OS: System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Cursor size. Slide it at least halfway.

2. Run Fusion with a Mac guest OS.

3. Attempt to use the guest OS.

Notice that the mouse pointer doesn’t accurately click. All the click targets are slightly off.

[RickShu]

Hi AviDrissman,

Your problem has been reported to Fusion development team, sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Regards,

-Rick

[banackm]

Does the same setting in the MacOS guest work ?

[ha5abe]

Exactly the same problem.
The virtual machine does not consider increasing the size of the mouse cursor on macOS.
It really hurts usability !!!

macOS Catalina 10.15.1
Vmware Fusion Professional Version 11.5.1

[jjsp357]

I have the same problem.

Host: macOS 10.15.1

VMWare Fusion: 11.5.1

Guests: CentOS 7.7 and Fedora 31

When using an enlarged cursor size in a MacOS Catalina host with VMWare Fusion 11.5.1, Linux guest operating systems will only register a click in the center of the enlarged cursor instead of the pointed tip of the cursor as it should. The Linux guests have the latest version of open-vm-tools-desktop installed. A normal cursor size will work properly. An enlarged Mac cursor does work properly with a Windows 10 guest, so it seems that only Linux guests are impacted. I have confirmed that VMWare Fusion is checked in the "Settings -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility" control panel. I have also tried unchecking and re-checking VMWare Fusion, as well as removing and re-adding VMWare Fusion from the "Settings -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility" control panel without any change to cursor behavior.

I have another Mac with VMWare Fusion 11.1.1 installed, and an enlarged cursor works fine and as expected with Linux guests.

To re-create this problem, go to "Settings -> Accessibility -> Display -> Cursor" and increase the cursor size. Then, when using a Linux guest using VMWare 11.5.1, the click target will be in the middle of the enlarged cursor instead of the tip. The Gaming setting in VMWare preferences is set to "Auto-detect mouse for games". Another symptom is that the enlarged cursor appearance is blurry when in the Linux guest.

Update: Uninstalling 11.5.1 and installing 11.5.0 seems to fix the problem for me.

[zhus]

A workaround for macOS VM: change the mouse cursor size accordingly in the System Preferences in guest. It seems work properly.

[sschramm]

Hi everyone, I've been running into this issue as well and it bugged me enough to open a support case with VMware. The “gaming mode” suggestion was not a good workaround for me because the cursor speed was too slow (even after increasing to mac) and it would “lock” the cursor into the VM, meaning you can’t drag and drop between the VM and the host. After a lot of wasted time I finally got a helpful reply from one of their technicians:

1. Locate a folder called "Virtual Machine" on the Mac OS side and open the folder and you should see an ex: Windows 10*64.vmwarevm.
2. Right click on the VM file
3. Select "Show Package Content".
4. Look for file ends with an extension .VMX (not .VMXF).
5. Note: Make a copy of the .VMX on your desktop before you make any changes so you have a backup.
6. Right click on the .VMX file and select open with Texedit.
7. Scroll all the way down and add the below entries.

mks.noHostCursor = "TRUE"

1. Click on File and select save.
2. Go to the Mac System Preferences > Security and Privacy > Privacy Tab > Accessibility > Select VMware Fusion and remove (minus) and re-add.

I was able to make this change and it fixed the issue for me! I asked if VMware would be willing to post here with this workaround and comment on when an update with the fix would be available, but they declined so hopefully this helps.

-Scott

[dariusd]

[EDIT: I think I might have messed up my testing... I'll repeat my testing and update here when I'm done.  Sorry!]

[EDIT #2: I tested again and bumped into an odd problem with the Tech Preview (the UI died once with "ASSERT bora/lib/pollCF/pollCF.mm:967"), but after restarting the Fusion UI I could verify that the mouse pointer problem described in this thread is indeed fixed, so I'm reinstating my earlier post below.]

I also noticed this problem with Fusion 11.5.3, but when I tried it with the Fusion Tech Preview 20H1​​​​ it seems to no longer seems to occur, so this might have been fixed.

If you don't mind trying out a Tech Preview, please do give it a go and report your findings.  We would always love to hear your feedback on the Tech Preview in general but I would not advise deploying beta-quality Tech Preview releases onto production systems where stability and compatibility are critical.  You can download the Fusion Tech Preview 20H1 here​.

Thanks,

--

Darius

[AviDrissman]

Hi, sorry to miss this post.

This is still broken, macOS 10.15.7 now, and VMWare Fusion 12.0.0 (16880131).

The repro is the same. Make your mouse pointer bigger, and notice that the hotspot in VMs is in the middle of the mouse pointer.

Please fix it and feel free to contact me with any questions.