How to copy and paste between VMware Player VM and host desktop

Last updated on September 9, 2020 by Dan Nanni

If you are using a virtual machine (VM) running on VMware Player, you may have wondered how to copy and paste a text from the guest VM to VMware host desktop, and vice versa. Otherwise, you will have to explicitly transfer the text between the VM and VMware host by other means (e.g., SSH), which is quite cumbersome.

Fortunately the copy and paste problem will just go away if you install VMware Tools on your VMware Player VM. VMware Tools offer many cool features to your VMs. For example, you can move the cursor in and out of your VM console without pressing <Ctrl>+<Alt>. Also, you can now easily copy and paste texts in and out of your VMware Player's VM console and VMware host desktop machine.

To install VMware Tools on your VMware Player VM, follow these instructions.

Besides copying and pasting texts, VMware Tools even allow you to share folders between guest VMs and their host desktop. To enable this feature, following the steps below.

During installation of VMware Tools, vmware-install.pl will ask you:

The VMware Host-Guest Filesystem allows for shared folders between the host OS and the guest OS in a Fusion or Workstation virtual environment. Do you wish to enable this feature?

Make sure to answer yes, which is actually the default answer.

Once you reboot your VM after successfully installing VMware Tools, you can freely copy and paste, as well as copy files between VMware Player's guest VMs and VMware host desktop.

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