Global hotkeys using the VBox Guest Additions?

[RevAaron]

Hi! First post, long time user of VBox.

Is there any functionality built in to the VBox Guest Additions that would allow a global hotkey for switching between the guest OS and the host OS? It's easy enough to handle from the host OS side. My end goal is to have a machine wide hotkey that would act as an Alt-Tab between my host and guest environments- Ctrl-Alt-\, for instance.

Nearest I've come up with is to use a grab the key event, pass it to a socket on the Windows side, and have AutoHotKey switch out of the Window. Cumbersome, and requires a bit of a delay to make it all work.

The host OS is Windows, guest OSes are numerous. Linux is the guest I use most often.

Since I'm posting, I should say: thanks for an awesome tool! I've completely replaced VMWare with it- work licenses it, but it's slow, flaky and huge compared to VBox. Kudos to the VBox team for doing in 30 MB what VMWare needs 400 MB for- and I can still suspened/hibernate while VBox is installed.

Regards,
Aaron

[Perryg]

Not that I am aware of. You can use the alt-tab to select the window I suppose.
I just use seamless and have the best of both worlds in a single desktop.

[RevAaron]

In this case, Alt-Tab won't work- the events are caught by the guest OS. That's OK by me, because I do use Alt-Tab within my guest OSes, as well as various Win- and Alt- keycombos.

Seamless doesn't play well with my window manager on Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenSolaris- awesome. I don't see the window titles on the top bar, that gets left out in seamless mode.

I guess what I'm looking for is a key command that will always be caught by the guest additions or VBox- like Right Control being your "Host Key," except that I could map it to a certain command or task. Something to supplement the Host Key combos. If I could make new Host Key hotkeys it'd be easier- Host+Alt Backslash would be perfect.

I suppose what I'm looking for is a single hotkey that would it'd be equivalent to hitting the Host key, then Alt-Tab- and that it'd work even in full-screen mode.

Thanks for the reply!

[umina]

Hotkeys

I wish to add to the need for global hot keys. I use Fedora and seamless mode is great for running windows apps, but I am now using Virtual Box to organize several humanly impossible tasks that result in somewhat cluttered desktops. I do this in full screen mode.

I've built several virtual machines and use each one as a separate desktop. This works great as all the stuff specific to a single endeavor is in a single machine, but there's not easy way to switch between them rapidly, or to get back to the host to another session - which might contain a seamless set of windows.

(HK1 and HK2 below means a HK sequence or combination of keys.)

Even using seamless windows could benefit from some creative hot key structuring. For example, imagine being able to switch all of your guest windows from VM1 to VM2 while in the current desktop context. For example, VM1 might have 4 windows which are showing on your current desktop. Hitting HK1 might move you to seamless guest 2 which shows only the windows from that seamless session.

Hitting HK2 would switch you gnome desktop, and each of those might have one or more seamless sessions assigned - or a single full screen guest. At this point the human environment would be built like an object structure and be abstract enough to support the incredible creativity and disparate processes the human mind is capable of.

My preference, since I run on a linux host is to have cntrl-alt-left|right arrow which switches the session box in gnome for HK2. HK1 could be cntrl-alt-up|down.

Perhaps there is something in the API and I can extend VirtualBox to have this feature. I'm going to look at that next, but in fact, every OS guest or host will have different desireable keys.

/Len