Hide Guest Window

[jdk]

It would be handy to have the possibility to hide/close the Guest OS Window, but keep the VM running.

I have a Linux Server OS setup in a VM to simulate my VPS server, to which I have SSH access. I do all operations on the VM in the same way: through SSH. So, I don't need the window of the VM to be visible. When closing the VM window 3 options are available:

Save the machine state
Send the shutdown signal
Power off the machine

A 4th option could be added:

Keep VM running

[Sander van Leeuwen]

You should use the headless frontend instead then. See the manual.

[Grigory]

Of course headless is a workaround, but please note that all other virtual machines (microsoft virtual pc, vmware etc) allows to close the display window without stopping a guest. This is handy if you have multiple GUI guests running (windows or macos) and don't want a lot of windows to clutter your desktop. So if you need to see some VM you just start something like "virtual box manager" and just clicks a running guest to see it's window. This will be very handy for many users, i think. And it's not hard to implement due to a COM/XPCOM nature of guest-to-gui communication.

[FogKnight]

Upvote. The new KVM mode available in the Windows version of Vmware is very handy in this regard.

[Frank Mehnert]

Yes, and you can beta-test this feature by compiling VBox from trunk and start the VM with

VirtualBox --startvm VM_NAME --separate

Then (while the VM is running), try to terminate the VM. The dialog will contain an additional entry allowing to terminate the GUI why the VM is kept running. Starting the VM like above will attach the new GUI process to the VM.

[Technologov]

FIXED in v5.0

[Ott]

Has this regressed? The option no longer appears in 5.1.26

[Technologov]

It exists but in the "View" menu, not in "Close VM' button.

[snips]

It's changed again to Machine -> Detach GUI

[raarts]

and... it disappeared again (well at least on my OSX it's nowhere to be found). Version 5.2.16 r123759

[Socratis]

@raarts, it's there, I just saw it. "Machine" -> "Detach GUI". I'm on OSX too, 5.2.16...

[ansisys]

And it's gone again. Linux virtualbox v.5.2.20 the option to re-detach (or hide/make it headless again) the running vm is just not there. Can anyone confirm?

[vbflex]

this hide and seek game is unbelievable. It has prolonged for 10 year (and counting). Virtualbox Version 6.0.0 r127566 (Qt5.6.3) on MacOS (10.14) still lacks Detach option on normally started (I mean not headless) machines. tested with Ubuntu Xenial64, CentOS7.4, Vmware photon 2