Multiple Monitors and placement of VM monitors

Here you can provide suggestions on how to improve the product, website, etc.
Post Reply
Mudoch
Posts: 16
Joined: 19. Aug 2017, 00:16

Multiple Monitors and placement of VM monitors

Post by Mudoch »

I have multiple monitors except when on the road. One thing that is a pain is, in windows hosts, is that I can't predefine, before starting VM, which VM Monitor shows on physical monitor. Yes the selections made will Stick for the next launch, but it sometimes does not behave well if # of physical monitors change.

I'd like to define general "preferred" VM Monitor to Physical Monitor but also a fall back behavior, If Physical monitors less than desired VM monitors, what action to take, show extra VM monitors or exclude from config.

I 'm looking for something within VM VirtualBox Manager to predefine monitor layout, If have 1 physical only allow 1 monitor, If 2 or more allow start first VM monitor in Physical 1, VM monitor 2 in Physical 3.. etc. MS Windows will adjust for multiple monitors I feel that a little better "auto" handling by VirtualBox would be of benefit to the product esp. under Windows hosts.
multiOS
Volunteer
Posts: 800
Joined: 14. Sep 2019, 16:51
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: WIN11,10, 7, Linux (various)
Location: United Kingdom

Re: Multiple Monitors and placement of VM monitors

Post by multiOS »

AFAIK the VirtualBox app doesn't know anything about the organisation (layout) of multi-monitor systems and has no control over what is displayed on which monitor. That's a properly a function of the Host Operating System.
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Multiple Monitors and placement of VM monitors

Post by scottgus1 »

I could see this as an interesting idea for laptop users with a bigger setup at home.

You can put this idea on the Bugtracker.

FWIW it may be possible to do this now. The number of monitors in a guest and (likely) their positions on the host monitor(s) are in the guest's .vbox 'recipe' file, and the .vbox file contents are scriptable with vboxmanage commands. If your scripting language can tap the OS's setup and tell when the external monitors are present or absent, then vboxmanage commands can feed the appropriate changes to the .vbox file then start the guest.
mattpayne
Posts: 1
Joined: 20. Feb 2021, 23:01
Primary OS: Debian other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Ubuntu

Re: Multiple Monitors and placement of VM monitors

Post by mattpayne »

Difficult to pull off given VMbox has no idea of the layout of multi-monitor systems. Would love to see it with that said.
Post Reply