Sending print screen commands to virtual machines running in VMware Fusion

Products

• VMware Desktop Hypervisor

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about taking a screen shot of a virtual machine.

Environment

VMware Fusion 12.x VMware Fusion 4.x VMware Fusion 8.x VMware Fusion 6.x VMware Fusion Pro 8.x VMware Fusion 7.x VMware Fusion 2.x VMware Fusion 11.x

VMware Fusion Pro 10.x VMware Fusion 1.x VMware Fusion 3.x VMware Fusion Pro 11.x VMware Fusion Pro 12.x VMware Fusion 5.x VMware Fusion 10.x

Resolution

There are two ways to take a screen capture of a virtual machine:

• From the Fusion menu bar, click Virtual Machine > Send Key > Print Scrn.
  1. This works like a regular Windows screen print, and puts an image of the Window screen into Windows clipboard.
  2. From there, paste it into an application like Paint or Word.
  3. Use Fusion's keyboard mapping feature to map keys on the Mac keyboard to the Windows Print Scrn key. For example, map the Mac keystroke Option+P to Alt+Print Scrn. For more information, see Tips on using a Macintosh keyboard (344573).
      
• Use the Mac utility Grab (its keyboard shortcuts work when in any application, including Fusion):
   
  • Command+Shift+3 takes a picture of the whole screen (which works best if the virtual machine window is maximized or switched to Full Screen or Unity mode) and saves it to a file on the Mac desktop.
  • Ctrl+Command+Shift+3 copies the picture to the clipboard, rather than saving it to a file. Paste it into an application on the Mac (for example, TextEdit) or into a Windows application.
     
  For more information, see the Apple document: Take a screenshot on your Mac

Additional Information

The Print Screen command may not function when using Fusion 1.x. A complimentary update to Fusion 2.x is available from the Broadcom Support Portal.

 

Note: Certain third-party Windows applications also allow to take screen captures.