topic Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3 in VMware Workstation Player Discussions

Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

yarlz — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 12:38:07 GMT

I'm using VMWare Workstation Player 15.5.2 build-15785246 on arch linux, running gnome3 + GDM (so wayland, not xorg). My guest OS is Windows 10.

The player fails to capture my keyboard, which is rather annoying since I can't use the windows shortcuts (i.e. Win+E for explorer, Windows key for start menu).

I have tried whitelisting the app, by running

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.wayland xwayland-allow-grabs true

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.wayland xwayland-grab-access-rules "['Vmplayer']"

This didn't work though. It does do the trick for Virtualbox. Perhaps a look at their source can help.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

RDPetruska — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 13:08:37 GMT

Do you have the VMware Tools installed?

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

yarlz — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 16:17:55 GMT

on my guest system? yes.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

yarlz — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 16:18:59 GMT

I'd like to add that pressing win+E results while vmware is supposedly grabbing my keyboard, triggers the gnome action i configured for that key.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

xrishox — Sat, 30 May 2020 21:38:34 GMT

I'm having the same issue with fedora 32 running gnome 3 and wayland. I hope you guys work toward supporting wayland natively.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

cmprmsd — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 12:49:01 GMT

For me, the current state under Wayland is, how it should be.

In Virtualbox you can configure, if you want to pass hotkeys to the VM or have them active on the host.

I really appreciate having hotkeys, that do always work e.g. switch workspaces on the host with my hotkeys and have other hotkeys for the VMs.

If VMware is planning to change this, they should make it configurable.
I would also like to have this option within X11 and i3, but up to now, nothing has changed in this aspect.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

tom___ — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 23:31:57 GMT

> the current state under Wayland is, how it should be

What do you mean? This problem still exists for me even under workstation 16.

Has anyone figured out a way to get workstation to properly route all keys to a guest on wayland? I know it works on Xorg, but VMWare claims support for wayland, and I would argue this problem makes workstation unusable.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

toomuchgottscha — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 10:42:39 GMT

im wondering why the input grab works with virtualbox. there must be some kind of list for applications that allow this under wayland.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

xrishox — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 02:05:09 GMT

i would like to see this issue fixed as well

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

DacianMarin — Tue, 16 May 2023 11:30:01 GMT

I would like to see this issue fixed as well

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

dlech — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 16:10:23 GMT

This looks like the VirtualBox patch for how they fixed it: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/19650

Workarounds for a few things:

WIN+ALT+TAB instead of ALT+TAB
CTRL+ESC to open start menu

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

stuckj2 — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 03:31:36 GMT

For now just adding Super to your shortcut seems to be the only viable workaround (e.g., Super-Alt-Tab instead of Alt-Tab, etc). Not ideal, but better than having no shortcut.

Definitely interested in a fix from vmware on this.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

banackm — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 15:56:41 GMT

The vmplayer binary just runs the UI, not the console.

Try adding exceptions for the vmware-vmx and mksSandbox binaries instead?

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

stuckj2 — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 15:26:41 GMT

Thanks @banackm. I tried this, but still no luck:

gsettings get org.gnome.mutter.wayland xwayland-allow-grabs "true" gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.wayland xwayland-grab-access-rules "['vmplayer','vmware-vmx','mksSandbox']"

I would think it is the UI that needs the grab exception, right? Since that is the part interacting with mutter.

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

banackm — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 16:24:50 GMT

The actual VM console window isn't rendered by the UI process on Linux, no.

Can you post the vmware.log and mksSandbox.log from your setup?

Re: Grab keyboard on wayland/gnome3

stuckj2 — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 21:44:17 GMT

Sure. I'm attaching them to this reply from a resume I just did.