Please don't intercept Multimedia keys -> no plans to fix further

[Technologov]

Currently VBox (2.2 and 3.0 BETA) intercepts multimedia keys. In my opinion it should not do so, or at least make it configurable.

This is because I usually listen to music on my host system, and simultaneously work on guest VM. I can't control media player using multimedia keys this way.

This is especially true for volume keys, and partially true for next/prev song. (as there may be cases where I want multimedia keys in VM)

Multimedia keys do have standard scancodes AFAIK.

-Technologov

[Entity]

I also vote for this. There should be some option to not intercept multimedia keys.

[Technologov]

This issue is still relevant as of VBox 3.0.10

[Technologov]

This issue is still relevant as of VBox 3.1.0

This is also related to bugs like #4238, #4208, #2145, #1668 and #1773

-Technologov

[Technologov]

NOTE: The other bugs are Mac host related. This one is about Windows host.

[Technologov]

Another related bug found: #4939

-Technologov

[Dylan Justice]

Also applies to Linux host.

[Michael Thayer]

The workaround here (at least on Linux hosts) is to press the host key to temporarily stop grabbing the keyboard. That means that the guest will still get all the key presses that a "normal" application would, but not ones that have a special meaning, like Alt-Tab or the multimedia keys.

[Technologov]

michael: Your proposed workaround is bad, because it disrupts my usual workflow. (having Audio on Windows host, and doing some work on Linux guest for example).

I want my multimedia keys to be optionally assigned to my host -or- guest. Should be configurable.

-Technologov, 14.7.2010.

[Technologov]

Problem still exists in vbox 4.1.8.

Especially big problems exists if users want to use "Alt+Tab" key combo in seamless mode guest. Users can't.

-Technologov

[Stamimail]

This affect not only the volume, but Windows keys Shortcuts

​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=46576&sid=88cd424d65f675e0041857a8a64e60a3

[Michael Thayer]

See also ticket #10179.

[Stamimail]

What about this. please add an option to choose in General

[Stamimail]

Still waiting...

What aboout to enable Interception only if the mouse is been clicked inside the VM windows, and disable Interception when clicking on the Title/Caption of the Window.

This problem also doesn't allow to other programs to control the VMs windows, Like adding transpercy and resizng windows by Hotkeys progarms, and like making problem with cycling between taskbar button by mouse wheel... ​http://rammichael.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/7+-Taskbar-Tweaker.png

[Michael Thayer]

Disabling automatic keyboard capture in the global machine settings should do what you want. On Windows hosts this is currently known to cause problems with the AltGr key, which does not exist in all keyboard layouts. This should be fixable but has not been done yet for lack of time and because we haven't had many (any?) complaints about it.

[Stamimail]

VirtualBox 5.0.0 released

I afraid this feature has not yet been implemented well.

What aboout to enable Interception only if the mouse is been clicked inside the VM windows, and disable Interception when clicking on the Title/Caption of the Window.

For example, Alt+Tab: When we dealing with the Guest, the Alt+Tab should be launched to the Guest. If we clicking on the Title/Caption of the Window, then the Alt+Tab should be launched to the Host.

Multimedia buttons, maybe need to be in seperated settings. I think there will be such who will want to control the Host by the Multimedia buttons, while enabling automatic keyboard capture.

Also, I didn't find a way to configure these settings when the VM is Powered Off, by the Main VBox Manager.

[Michael Thayer]

I'm afraid that there are no plans to fix this further just now as there are so many more urgent things to do with our time. We would probably not accept user contributions for this either, as it would be likely to add more additional complexity to a tricky part of the code than we could justify.

Current state of support: you can configure whether auto-capture is on or off by default, you can manually toggle it, and at some point we might (but also might not) add some way of easily checking the status in full-screen and seamless mode.

[xylo]

@michael: Thanks for the reply although it's not what we wanted to hear. Maybe the task was really too complex.

Personally, I don't need any configuration option for this. I don't even care which system (host or guest) gets the key press. But the problem is that none of the systems get the keys. VirtualBox is consuming them but not forwarding them to the guest system. That's why I think this is rather a bug than a feature request. Is there any good reason not to forward a key to the guest if the key is not one of the special keys (e.g. host key)?