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.
  
  This works like a regular Windows screen print, and puts an image of the Window screen into your Windows clipboard. From there, you can paste it into an application like Paint or Word.
  
  You can use Fusion's keyboard mapping feature to map keys on the Mac keyboard to the Windows Print Scrn key. For example, you can map the Mac keystroke Option+P to Alt+Print Scrn. For more information, see Tips on using a Macintosh keyboard (1001675).
   
• 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 you first maximize your virtual machine window or switch to Full Screen or Unity mode) and saves it to a file on your Mac desktop.
  • Ctrl+Command+Shift+3 copies the picture to the clipboard, rather than saving it to a file. You can then 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
  
  Note: The preceding links were correct as of August 06, 2021. If you find the link is broken, please provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

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 VMware Download Center.

 

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

Fusion で実行中の仮想マシンにプリント スクリーン コマンドを送信する
将 print screen 命令发送到在 Fusion 中运行的虚拟机