This quick tutorial demonstrates how to disable copy/paste operations between a VMWare Workstation 16 Player virtual machine (VM) and its host machine. The method outlined below involves editing a file in the virtual machine’s directory. Before proceeding with the instructions, make sure the VM is turned off.
NOTES: VMWare Workstation Player 16 can be downloaded at this link. ‘Guest machine’ refers to a second operating system (Linux, Windows, etc) running on a virtual machine displayed in a new window on the host machine. ‘Host machine’ refers to the actual physical PC.
The guest virtual machine has a .vmx file that can be edited to disable sharing between it and the VM’s host machine. The .vmx file resides in the directory of the guest virtual machine. A typical path to the directory looks like this:
C:\Users\Matt\Documents\Virtual Machines\NameOfVirtualMachine
The name of the file will be NameOfVirtualMachine.vmx. Open that file with a text editor. Find the following lines in the file and edit the parameters. If the parameters don’t exist, add the lines mentioned below to the .vmx then save it.
isolation.tools.copy.disable = "true"isolation.tools.paste.diable = "true"
Boot the guest machine and test if the clipboard is still being shared or not.