Dead keys on host system prevent VMware guest from receiving keystrokes at all

[rrr rr]

I am running VMWare Fusion on MacOS with a Swedish keyboard. Since some time back, it appears that the dead keys on my keyboard don't register in the clients I run in VMware at all (these include ~, ^, `, and ´ which are physically between + and backspace on the numbers row, and to the right of å on the next row). For example, running xev in Debian 12 reveals that no event arrives when I press these keys in the guest OS.

This is rather crippling, as several of these characters are crucial for scripting (try to grep without ^, or opening ~/Desktop without ~)

I have an external USB keyboard which exhibits the additional symptom that the key to the left of Z generates § instead of < in the guest but this works correctly on the laptop's built-in keyboard so should probably be regarded as tangential.

I recently switched from an Intel Mac to a new M3 one so I can say with some confidence that the host architecture does not seem to matter.

If I install the English ABC keyboard and switch the host to use that, the dead keys start to work inside the VMware client, i.e. the keystrokes finally reach the client and work as expected. But this obviously requires me to install a second keyboard, switch to it, and then remember to switch back when I move the cursor to another window outside of VMware.

It was rather hard to find this forum in the first place; I hope this is an acceptable way to submit a bug report for this product.

[Erik Maaloe]

I have a similar problem with a Danish keyboard. I cannot enter for instance non-Danish letters in my Fusion guests like é or ö which I normally do by first pressing ´ and then e (or ¨+o). Here in my Mac host it works, but both in my Windows 11 guest and my Ubuntu 24.04 guest the results are only e and o, not é and ö.

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ErikM
Long-time VMware user
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[Erik Maaloe]

My problem has not been resolved with the VMware Fusion release 13.6.1. The keys ´`¨^~ (and maybe more) are still dead in my quest operating systems. I still cannot combine ´ and e to get é, among others. In Windows I have installed VMware Tools 12.4.5 (the latest version I think).

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ErikM
Long-time VMware user
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[Technogeezer]

The VMware Tools version isn't going to matter, since there's no keyboard driver present there. Windows will use a standard Microsoft keyboard settings. 

Some thoughts:

For Linux guests, see what keyboard mappings are available and see if they're handling the "dead" keys to generate a character. 

For Windows, I performed an experiment. My default keyboard is set to the standard US English keyboard. I couldn't get the accented characters to work. I then installed the US International keyboard and switched to it. Now keystroke combinations such as "`+e" generate the accented character. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Erik Maaloe]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, it is correct that you can get accented characters by switching to US international keyboard. If you can find them without having the physical keyboard layout in front of you, which is a bit difficult. And then you don't have the special Danish characters like æ, ø and å. And many other characters are in other positions, again difficult to find without the physical keyboard layout.

But switching between keyboards is an interim solution, however awkward and slow.

And it did work in Fusion 13.5 and before, so it is a bug introduced in Fusion 13.6. And not fixed in 13.6.1.

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ErikM
Long-time VMware user
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[Carlos Carrascón]

I have the same problem,

I'm using Fusion 13.6.1 in my MacBook Pro; with Spanish keyboard in my host, keys like [ { ^ won't work with Spanish keyboard in my guest machines.

As Erik said in his message all keys work fine changing the host keyboard layout to any other language. This issue also began for me when i updated to version 13.6, everything was working fine for me before that.

[Frédéric Hardy]

Hi! Same problem here with "`" with Linux Fedora as guest mapped with French macintosh keyboard: "`" and according "£" are dead :/, the according keyboard event seems not to be received by guest. Hope a fix will be quickly available because it is very annoying.

[Sta Koul]

Just noticed this thread while I started another discussion. Have the same with greek language. I do not know  if it happened with 13.6 or 13.6.1 (I think I had installed 13.6 and then got notification for 13.6.1 update). In any case, my issue is that I cannot use accented letter in windows (windows 10 intel, windows 11 arm) when the host keyboard is greek as well.

[Frédéric Hardy]

Hi !

In my case, the keys come back after having disabled "host shortcuts" checkbox in VM preferences. But it is a workaround, because it is very annonying to not be able to switch to a host application using command-tab…

Best regards, Fred.

[Technogeezer]

@Frédéric Hardy that's an interesting observation. It makes me wonder if this issue is related to the removal of Unity support. Having command-tab work to switch windows between host applications and Unity-presented guest applications certainly would be beneficial when Unity is active. 

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Erik Maaloe]

I have disabled "host shortcuts" as suggested by Fred. It works for me, i.e. it has reenabled the accented characters. I haven't yet seen any problems or side effects since my quests run on a separate monitor. I don't think the command-tab key is only needed when running in Unity mode, but also if you need to switch to a host running behind your guest in a full screen one-monitor setup.

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ErikM
Long-time VMware user
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[Technogeezer]

Hmmm. I wonder if we can get anyone's attention from VMware/Broadcom on this to find out if this was an intentional change?

@Dhairya Tomar @Michael Roy can we get someone to look at this thread and comment about whether this was an intentional change or is it a bug?

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- Paul (technogeezer)
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[Rajeswara Reddy Kotla]

We have filed a bug for this issue and the team will be looking into it.

[rrr rr]

I struggled a bit to find the "host shortcuts" but I guess you mean the "Enable Mac OS Host Keyboard Shortcuts" checkbox on the Mac Host Shortcuts tab in the active Keyboard & Mouse profile.

Unchecking this certainly improves things in that keystrokes which previously did not register at all are now making it through from the host to the client, but not all of them produce the correct symbol (for example, shift and the key to the right of Å produces ' instead of ^, even though the unshifted key does now generate a dead ¨)

(I guess it's possible that some of the hacks I tried before are still active and mix up things for me.)

A definite drawback is that it is now very hard to get out of a full-screen client.

[Jyrki YliNokari]

Hope this will be fixed soon. Workaround for using host shortcuts (like Command + Tab) is to use the fullscreen minibar, move mouse on top of it and then press the hotst shortcut

[Christophe Greisberger]

Well, still not working with 13.6.2

And, at least on my new Silicon M4, the "Enable Mac OS Host Keyboard Shortcuts" trick does not work.
There is no difference when I tick it on or off (the dead keys don't work and the host shortcuts, like Cmd+Tab, continue working).
It seems that this setting has no effect.
I use the German keyboard on both the host and the guests, and I tried with local and a remote ESXi guests.

[Christophe Greisberger]

Well, still not working with 13.6.2

And, at least on my Silicon M4, the "Enable Mac OS Host Keyboard Shortcuts" trick does not work.
I use the German keyboard on both the host and the guest.

In fact, there is no difference when I tick it on or off (the dead keys don't work and the host shortcuts, like Cmd+Tab, continue working as is this setting has no effect).

[Joao Evangelista]

Hi, I also have M4 and got it working like Fred said. I had to click the VMWare Fusion Menu - Settings - Select Mac Profile instead of Default Profile and uncheck "Enable Key Mappings", now all my special characters are working properly! All the other settings didn't work, only this one.

[Fer Nando]

Hi !

Any news about this?

Thanks!!!

[Jyrki YliNokari]

Running contemprary Linux under Fusion perfectly seems to be an impossible task. There are three obstacles:

• keyboard mapping and mac hotkeys
• screen resolution with wayland compositor (instead of X11).
• copy/paste between MacOs and Linux

Both Linux and Fusion are to blame.

In Linux settings, none of the Apple and MacBook keyboards do not work, they are buggy. Layouts do work. Always use Generic 105 key keyboard.

In Fusion keyboard settings the host shortcuts needs to disabled due to a Fusion bug.

I was able to get close. The only remaining issue is that since the host shortcuts must be disabled, Switching from Linux to MacOs is slightly cumbersome: First press left Control/Command to detach keyboard/mouse focus from Linux and only after that Command/Tab or whatever Mac keyboard shortcut.

Here are my detailed settings:

MacBookPro 2019 16" (Intel i9) with FInnish/Swedish keyboard

Fusion 13.6.2

Distro: KDE Neon 6.2 (Debian with Qt 6.8 + KDE 6.10 gui api)

I only use full screen.

Fusion Settings -> Keyboard & Mouse

• Duplicate "Profile - Default" keyboard settings as "Proper Settings" and Edit
  • Key Mappings
    • Enable Key Mappings ON
    • Enable Language Specific Mappings ON (But this does not work and needs to be mitigated as below)
    • Add the Map Mac shortcuts:
      • §  ->  <
      • Shift-§  ->  Shift-<
      • Command-Tab  -> Alt-Tab
      • Command  ->  Control (removes windows key)
      • Possibly others
    • Mac Host Shortcuts
      • Enable Mac OS Host Shortcuts OFF
      • Wíndows key: Right Command Key
    • Fusion Shortcuts:
      • Optionally Disable Command H Q and E allowing them to map to  Control counterparts

Fusion settings -> Display

• Use full resolution for Retina Display: ON
• Scaled high resolution: Single Window
• VM Resolution:
  • Single Window: Stretch the virtual machine in the window
  • Full Screen: Resize the virtual machine to fit the screen

Linux has two keyboard settings: Model and Layout. All the Apple or Mac Physical settings are old and  buggy. Generic 105 Keyboard works properly.

• Model: Generic 105-key PC
• Layout: Use your national layout. use (classic)-version if you are accustomed to the dead keys (i.e. always press space after ^), or (Macintosh)-version if you want them to behave as in Mac.

Linux Desktop is based on legacy X11 or modern Wayland compositor. This is typically selected in the Linux login screen corner. Getting retina screen to work with proper font scaling is a pain and typically works better with X11 than Wayland. WIth the KDE Neon 6.2 (Plasma desktop built on KDE 6.10 + Qt 6.8) Display scaling work also on Wayland (for me, mainly Qt Creator and Firefox), but on Wayland, the Copy/Paste from Linux to MacOs does not work, pparently due to multiple paste buffers compilications in Wayland and a bug (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=500859) in the KDE. Thus I still have to use X11 until KDE 

In the 16" macbook pro the native screen reslution is 3072x1920. The supported scaled resolutions are 2048 x 1280, 1792 x 1120, 1344 x 840, 1152 x 720. The 1792x1120 maps 1:2 to X/Wayland 3584z2240.

Linux Display Settings:

• Resolution: 3584x2240 (16:10)
• DPI Scaling: 200%
• Old applications: System scaling: ON

Thus use 200% DPI scaling and System Scaling ON, find out what supported scaled resolutions are supported and select appropriate from the Linux display settings

[Frédéric Hardy]

Hi!

Version 13.6.3 don't fix the problem, sadly.

This bug is really VERY annoying, please, can you explain why the fix is not always available?

Because I'm a developper, and it is very difficult to understand why, by the ****, it is not fixed since two minor versions…

And I'm confirm the bug about copy/paste when Wayland is used, but from my point of view, it is on the WXayland's side. By the way, it is VERY annoying too, so any workaround from VMWare will be welcomed.

Best regards,

Fred

[Erik Martinez Sanchez]

I am also affected by this issue, as I reported here. The characters do at least appear when connecting with Remote Desktop on macOS, if it helps.

[James Lin]

We forgot to mention it in the Fusion 13.6.4 release notes, but we believe that this should be fixed now.

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[Erik Maaloe]

I can confirm this in my setup: MacOS 15.6.1, Fusion 13.6.4, VMware Tools 13.0.1 and Windows 11 24H2.

I have reenabled Mac Host Shortcuts in my Keyboard & Mouse Profile, and it is again possible to write accented characters like é ü ñ and ô as well as Danish characters æ ø å in my Windows VM.

Thanks!

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ErikM
Long-time VMware user
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