Exit Full Screen

[nanni61]

How do you get out of the full screen?

[walkswithpies]

I have been struggling with this too. None of the usual keyboard shortcuts seem to work (such as ctrl-command-f). It would be very useful to have a full screen toggle if there isn't one.

[insidegui]

That's not possible if you have the "Capture system keyboard shortcuts" option turned on for the virtual machine because all keyboard shortcuts will be delivered to the guest operating system. I am exploring ways to offer capture/release keyboard and mouse, but that's not natively supported by Virtualization.

To exit full screen without a keyboard shortcut works as any other standard Mac app: place the mouse cursor at the very top of the screen until the toolbar shows up, then click the green button. Below is a short video demonstrating it.

exitfullscreen.mov

[walkswithpies]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately 'pushing' to the top of the screen doesn't work for me when VirtualBuddy is full screen, although it does in other full screen apps, which is why I was looking for a shortcut.

I'm running Sequoia 15.3.2 (24D81) and the latest beta of VirtualBuddy - Version 2.0 (210). I've been using macOS / OSX for many, many years but I'm happy to post a video if it would help to see the menubar stay stubornly hidden. Thanks again, VirtualBuddy is a really useful utility and all your hard work is appreciated.

Edit: Hovering at the bottom of the screen does reveal the dock as you would expect, if that helps in any way.

[insidegui]

Weird! I'm running pretty much the exact same setup. I wonder if there's some macOS setting on the host that could be interfering with it.

[walkswithpies]

Weird!

I know! I'll poke around a bit and see if any of the dock or window manager settings seem to be interfering. Not that I've tweaked anything but you never know. If anyone else has this issue maybe could you post your macOS/VirtualBuddy version.

[insidegui]

My test was done in the exact same macOS and VirtualBuddy versions you're using.

[TheSpyder]

I'm also stuck in full screen, and neither the menubar shows up nor the keyboard shortcuts work (with the capture setting disabled, and even when the VM is shut down).

I thought it might be my external monitors (there's a separate bug I need to log about that) but even with those disconnected it's still stuck.

It's more than just annoying, I can't seem to quit VirtualBuddy after the VM shuts down (it just swaps to the full screen window). I had to force quit, thankfully when it reloaded the window was not full screen.

[insidegui]

If you can find out the steps to reproduce this, that would be really helpful. I haven't been able to reproduce this issue so far.

[TheSpyder]

In my case it seems to be external displays. I realised this morning that after reloading VirtualBuddy I could access the system menubar while it was fullscreen, and the "separate bug" I mentioned wasn't happening either so I'm going to assume that's related and info dump as much as I can. I discovered additional factors while writing this up so apologies if things turned out a bit jumbled.

The possibly-related glitch is that VirtualBuddy in full screen view doesn't fill the whole screen on my external display. This could be related why I can't get to the menubar, since it's anchored to the bottom left. The visual glitch seems caused by resolution scale not display connection.

setup

I run a 14" M2 Pro MacBook Pro in clamshell with two external USB-C monitors, each connected via separate cables, one rotated 90 degrees:

They're the same monitor (Dell S2722QC) but I have them set to different resolution scales.

I sometimes open the macbook to access Touch ID. Here's how that is arranged:

glitch screenshots

In clamshell mode with the issues replicated, VirtualBuddy (full screen on the primary monitor) does this:

The screen around VirtualBuddy is filled with my background image. When I open the laptop, VirtualBuddy does this:

With both external monitors disconnected VirtualBuddy doesn't fill the whole screen on the macbook either:

Interestingly, this is different to yesterday; in both cases it filled the whole width of the laptop screen but yesterday there was no system menubar and the background across the top of the screen was a solid light blue (which matched a portion of my desktop background). Today the system menubar is visible but a little short of the top.

discussion

I use my laptop in meetings so I'm regularly disconnecting from the desk setup. Replication for "cannot access system menu bar" is some combination of disconnecting monitors and opening the macbook while VirtualBuddy is open.

I haven't seen it while keeping VirtualBuddy fullscreen - making it tough to replicate exactly - it's only going fullscreen after a monitor swap that the issues begin. And only after multiple swaps; I sat here trying to toggle fullscreen after each change and it didn't have a problem.

When it happens the fullscreen animation is not smooth, it freezes about as long as the normal animation and then jumps to the fullscreen state.

While writing all this down I realised I hadn't set my resolution scales in every possible configuration of monitors, so sometimes it was using default scale. Correcting them to match in every possible combination of monitor connections seems to avoid the visual glitch. In fact with the "no menu bar" issue replicated, changes to resolution scale immediately cause the "partial full screen" glitch. That's 100% repeatable after the system menu bar breaks, just by changing the scale in display settings on one of the monitors where VirtualBuddy is not full screen.

Plausibly macOS is doing weird things as resolutions and coordinates change. I don't recall trying fullscreen before updating to 15.6 (24G84). While trying to track down a replication, I managed to get into a state where the leftover area had only a partial copy of the background - with what looks like a portion of the background from the portrait monitor (which is to the right of the primary monitor, where VirtualBuddy is full screen).

Hopefully this all helps; I'm a web developer and quite comfortable poking around system details if you need anything more.

[insidegui]

Thank you for the details. I'll investigate this further by testing different display setups.

[walkswithpies]

When I posted about this back in March it didn't occur to me to mention that I also an external display (Dell S2725DS @2560x1440) on a Mac mini. Just in case it helps build the picture. Thanks for looking into it.

[YBPN]

I found this page because I too could not un-fullscreen Virtualbuddy on Sequoia 15.5. The usual mouse-to-top-edge doesn't work to show the host menu bar. I'm using just one monitor.

However, the host dock works so I'm able to quit Virtualbuddy properly.