MacOS – Cycle between Mac apps and VMware 7 using cmd+tab

keyboardmacosshortcutvirtualizationvmware

I am trying to understand how I could switch back and forth in a productive manner when using a combination of VMware Fusion 7 and OS X El Capitan apps.

The keyboard shortcut that I am used to use thousands of times a day between Mac apps is
cmd+tab. I use it to cycle between apps, and would love to be able to do this to switch to other apps when inside VMware Fusion.

What it currently does when I press cmd+tab from within VMware Fusion is that it will cycle through the windows of the virtual Windows machine, not take me out of the virtual machine and into my Mac apps again.

This is clicked in my Virtual Machine settings:

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After looking online for a while, I found this tip, which doesn't work for me. This, although more subsequent, didn't seem to provide a workaround that would allow the user to use cmd+tab to get out of VMware Fusion. This didn't help, and this didn't help either.

I also looked fruitlessly into the Windows 7 Control Panels for a way to disable cycling through windows in Windows with that shortcut, which didn't work.

Best Answer

I had this same issue, which I resolved by enabling mission control (I had disabled it).

defaults write com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -bool FALSE && killall Dock