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How to connect one mouse to the main computer and the other to the virtual machine so that their work does not overlap in any way and each works only on the assigned device?

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  • maybe you are asking the wrong question ... ask instead how to ignore a specific mouse? ... follow that line of thought ... it may lead to a solution
    – jsotola
    Apr 19 at 1:21
  • @jsotola Not really. That use case is pretty normal and there is USB passthrough that can solve it (partially, so at least VM mouse won't affect host), too.
    – charlesz
    Apr 19 at 3:19

2 Answers 2

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It is possible to connect a mouse to VMware Workstation guest. You need to configure your VM to show all USB devices.

Procedure

  1. Select the virtual machine and select VM > Settings.
  2. On the Hardware tab, select USB Controller.
  3. Select Show all USB input devices. This option allows users to use special USB HIDs inside the virtual machine.
  4. Click OK to save your changes.
  5. Power on the virtual machine. HIDs appear in the Removable Devices menu.

See the dialog below (web image). In this example their "Show all USB input devices" is unchecked. You need to check this.

USB settings

Once this is done, you can pick one of your mouse in the Removable Devices menu of your VM, and connect it to the VM. It will be disconnected from the host.

However, this cannot stop the other mouse from joining the VM if you click inside the VM window to cause it to grab input devices. The best you can do is to disable all shortcuts that can cause the VM to grab your input, then do not click inside the VM window.

Reference: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Workstation-Pro/17/com.vmware.ws.using.doc/GUID-07883F0A-E7B5-4CBA-837D-0BA986E8B900.html

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I have VMware Workstation and on another machine Hyper-V. In both of these Apps, the mouse and keyboard cannot natively be disabled.

I looked up Virtual Box and it is the same thing.

So you cannot disable your host mouse on a Guest Machine.

It may be possible to add a USB mouse to a Guest with USB Pass Through. But that may lead to confusion in the Guest.

This is further complicated on a Laptop with a mouse in the keyboard or track pad plus a connected mouse. Both get passed through to the Guest.

The mouse (and keyboard) in the Guest is also used to install the Guest machine (any Windows or modern Linux guest machine), so the mouse (and keyboard) cannot be ignored (or else it may not be possible to install a system).

Short answer: What you want can not natively be done. All you can do is add a USB Mouse to the guest machine.

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