Adding Windows applications to your Mac's Applications folder using VMware Fusion
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Adding Windows applications to your Mac's Applications folder using VMware Fusion
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Article ID: 311538
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Updated On: 06-25-2025
Products
VMware Desktop Hypervisor
Issue/Introduction
The application sharing feature in Fusion 4 and later allows you to add Windows application icons in your Mac's application folder. This gives you the ability to quickly launch Windows apps while running your virtual machine in Unity mode. For more information, see Enable Default Applications in the VMware Fusion Help.
By default, when you first enable run Run Windows applications from your Mac's Applications folder, only third-party applications installed in Windows are added to the Mac's Applications folder.
To add a Windows application to the Mac's Applications folder:
In your Windows guest, run the application you want to add.
From the Fusion menu bar, go to View > Unity.
The application's icon now appears in the Dock. Right-click the icon and select Add to Mac Applications folder.
Open a new Finder window and navigate to your Applications folder. The Windows application is present.
Additional Information
If the virtual machine is shared between multiple users on the host, or if the virtual machine was created in VMware Workstation or VMware Player, this feature is not available by default. To enable this feature, you must set the permissions of your virtual machine so that your user account has read and write permissions and everyone else has read-only permissions. For more information, see Investigating permissions for Fusion virtual machines (1020786).