"Open in Low Resolution" for MacOS 13 (Ventura)

[matthewl]

Is anyone aware of a way to set VirtualBox 7 (7.0.6) to open in "Low Resolution" mode on Macs with Retina displays running MacOS Ventura?

After a standard VIrtualBox installation, my guest machines open in a very small window and the graphics performance is very poor. I can change the scaling to 200% in the VB settings and the size of the window is normal, but the video performance is still poor. This is an issue that has been encountered in previous versions of VirtualBox on MacOS and the solution has always been to right-click the app bundle in Finder and select Get Info. Then check the "Open in Low Resolution" check box. Now in Ventura the option seems to have been removed.

I've seen a few posts that suggest you can modify

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Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app/Contents/Info.plist

and set

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 NSHighResolutionCapable

to false. However, Apple seems to have made changes in Ventura that prevent even the root account (using sudo) from changing files located app bundles.

Has anyone found a way to resolve this?

[Dangermouse]

I also run Vbox in low resolution, for the same reasons.
Since Ventura, you also need to remove the code signature after modifying Info.plist
I have done it, I think it was :

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sudo rm -rf /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app/Contents/_CodeSignature

Give that a try...

[jailbird2]

I use this (you'll have to disable Gatekeeper and possibly SIP though:

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sudo perl -pi -e 's/NSHighResolutionCapable(.*)true/NSHighResolutionCapable\1false/' $(
 find /Applications/VirtualBox.app -type f -name Info.plist -exec fgrep -l 'NSHighResolutionCapable' '{}' +
)
sudo codesign --force --remove-signature /Applications/VirtualBox.app
sudo codesign --force --remove-signature /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app
sudo codesign --force --remove-signature /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/vmstarter.app