macOS Sonoma VM Not Displaying Selected Wallpaper in Fusion 10

[SnakeGirl]

i have created a macOS 14.0 Sonoma VM in Fusion 10 & it seems to run OK but i haven't yet been able to get it to display the wallpaper(s) i've selected, only either an all-white or all-black background.  Has anyone else running a Sonoma VM in Fusion encountered this?

[Technogeezer]

One thought:

I'm assuming you have VMware Tools installed in that VM.

Apple has been making more and more of its features and bundled applications dependent on 3D acceleration. t's possible that Sonoma is looking for 3D (Metal) acceleration for display of some of these screen savers/wallpaper. Fusion 10 does not support 3D acceleration for macOS guests. If this is the case, there's nothing you can do to fix it.

If you were running Fusion 12 or later, you could try to turn on the (experimental) 3D support for the macOS VM as noted in VMware KB article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/81657

If that doesn't work, it's extremely unlikely that VMware will make any changes to fix it. VMware has deprecated support for macOS virtual machines (see KB article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/88697?lang=en_US&queryTerm=88697 ).. macOS 12 Monterey was the last version that VMware did any work on for Fusion. macOS 13 Ventura and 14 Sonoma may work, but if they don't you're out of luck.

 

[ColoradoMarmot]

Highly likely due to lack of accelerated graphics support, and/or zero support for Sonoma in Fusion 10.  Sonoma support (if they're going to continue offering MacOS support at all), will be in the next release, expected sometime soon (aka 13.5).  VMWare tools have been depreciated for MacOS, so it's a coin flip if they'll officially support it as a guest at all, on a best effort basis, or pull support.  My guess is that it'll be 'here's the tools, they may or may not work' basis, but have no inside info.

[SnakeGirl]

So i tried turning on the experimental 3D support for the macOS VM as noted in VMware KB article https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/81657 but that did not work & i got a "Dictionary problem" error message.

 

i also took a look at the desktop pictures being used on Sonoma located in /System/Library/Desktop Pictures & found that the desktop picture files were of filetype .madesktop, which i am unfamiliar with.  When i tried manually setting the wallpaper selection to a picture of a more familiar filetype (Cyan.png), then i was able to get my selection to display as the current wallpaper.  

However, when i tried selecting the Sonoma.heic picture file, i had mixed results: at first it reverted back to an all-white background but when i repeated the same selection a couple more times in a row, the Sonoma.heic picture never actually did display, but somehow the selection triggered the Sonoma Horizon picture to be displayed as wallpaper instead.

So it appears that the pictures of filetype .madesktop are incompatible w/my Sonoma VM on Fusion 10.

 

What exactly is this .madesktop picture filetype, & is there a way to convert a picture from this to a more familiar/compatible picture filetype such as .heic, .png, or .jpg so that i can still display any of the wallpaper picture options offered in Sonoma?

[SnakeGirl]

Additional notes:

If i make a wallpaper selection from the Dynamic Wallpapers, Pictures, or Colors groups, then my selection does display.

If my selection is from the Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater, Earth, or Shuffle Aerials groups then either an all-white or all-black background is displayed.

[Technogeezer]

Trying to enable 3D support in any Fusion version lower than Fusion 12 won't work. They didn't provide it until Fusion 12.

I ran an experiment on my Mac mini 2014 running Monterey and Fusion 13.

I upgraded a Ventura VM that I had to Sonoma - 3D support was not enabled so the Fusion default SVGA device and driver were in use on Ventura. After the upgrade, I found that the default Sonoma wallpaper did not appear on either the login screen (it was black) or my desktop after I logged in (it was white).

At that point I shut down my VM and enabled the 3D support per the KB article. The Sonoma wallpaper now appeared on both the login screen and my desktop. I was able use the other Sonoma landscapes and cityscapes for my wallpaper.

So yes, it looks like there's something with the display of the new wallpaper formats that is dependent upon 3D acceleration support. That means they'll never work on Fusion 10.

 

 

[Steven_Michaud]

I tried the article's (https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/81657) solution in a macOS 14 guest running on macOS 13.6 (on an Intel Mac) in the 2023 Tech Preview (https://communities.vmware.com/t5/Workstation-2023-Tech-Preview/ct-p/ws-tp2023). It worked! And it solved another problem that's been annoying me for years -- now running applications show up in Mission Control's desktop thumbnails at the top of the guest's screen.

With the 2023 Tech Preview, at least, you no longer need to specify the screen width and height in the *.vmx file. You can just resize the guest's screen by grabbing and moving its lower right-hand corner.

Thanks!