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I do lots of research on net but I couldn't find any solution to my problem.

My host machine is Fedora 25 and I have two guest OS (Kali Linux and Windows 10). Both in my guest OSs every shortcut works properly(Ctrl+C etc.). But alt+tab and Windows key shortcuts doesn't work for guest os. Even i activate or deactivate host key (Right Ctrl) it still tabs between programs in host os. Please help me?

HDJEMAI
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Emre Kumaş
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  • Are you saying that alt-tab does not work in the guests, but works fine in the host? – mattdm Mar 05 '17 at 12:27
  • This is not a programming question and will likely be closed; you might want to try on http://unix.stackexchange.com/ or http://superuser.com/. That said, are you required to use VirtualBox? Have you tried the native KVM virtualization that comes with Fedora? – mattdm Mar 05 '17 at 12:29
  • Yes it works for host. But it doesn't work for guest host. – Emre Kumaş Mar 05 '17 at 17:25
  • I tried installing kernel but it didn't change anything and it started to give errors after booting my machine so I uninstalled kernel drivers for virtualbox. – Emre Kumaş Mar 05 '17 at 17:36
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    Have you tried using GNOME Boxes instead of VirtualBox? (No extra drivers required.) – mattdm Mar 06 '17 at 16:41
  • No. I didn't. But I am required to use Virtualbox for some reason. But thanks for your help. – Emre Kumaş Mar 08 '17 at 13:43

8 Answers8

12

For now, as discussed here, it looks like Windows Key + Alt + Tab does the trick

tylersDisplayName
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    Faced the same issue here, with Fedora 28 host, Windows 7 guest, and gnome3.28.2. Go to 'Settings' in gnome, and then to 'Devices' and then to 'Keyboard'. Click on 'Switch Applications' to set the key combination to 'Super+Tab'. Close 'Settings'. After this you can use Alt+Tab in your VM and Super+Tab in your guest. Hope this helps! – saubhik Jun 19 '18 at 16:53
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It is indeed a Wayland problem (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97333). Switching back to X11 solves the problem (on Debian Buster, uncomment #WaylandEnable=false in /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf, look for a similar file in Fedora)

ChennyStar
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After an upgrade to VirtualBox 6.0, alt-tab stopped working; it would switch to windows on the host, not on the (Linux) virtual machine.

Just by accident I discovered that left-clicking on the application shortcut (in the vertical strip on the left side of the screen) will switch to that application in the virtual machine, like alt-tab used to do.

UserX
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I am on VirtualBox 6.0.14 under Windows 8 host OS. Guest OS is Arch linux. The Host key (Right Ctrl) when in guest OS followed by Alt + Tab worked fine until I pressed some key blindly.

Since then it stopped working unitil I occasionally pressed Host key followed by Alt + Esc. This sequence now works fine to switch from guest OS to host OS. Then the host OS Alt + Tab works normally.

Valentine Shi
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If you remove all gnome3 configuration and start from a fresh login of gnome shell it also works. And the solution for use the right alt to the guest and left alt for the host also works.

user2868816
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Switching from Wayland to Xorg, at the login screen, fixed this issue for me. 

Debian, linux kernel 5.3.0-1-amd64
Gnome-shell 3.34.1
Virtualbox 6.0.14_Debian r132055
stelios
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As @ChennyStar and @stelios mentioned, this problem is related to gnome wayland. The same problem for virtual box is also visible in vmware workstation. There is a copy/paste problem between host and guest which is related to this as well. Ctrl+Alt+Arrow keys do not switch between guests because of the same reason.

I have seen this problem in Ubuntu 20.04 with kernel 5.4.0-40 and Gnome 3.36.4 on a high-tech acer laptop.

From settings, choose "Gnome on Xorg" instead of wayland when you login, And this solves all the problems at once.

Mostafa H.
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It will work when using two alt's (right and left )

MarcinK
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