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Using VMware Workstation 10 on Windows, I've read "Use Multiple Monitors for One Virtual Machine" and managed to make it work as described when running the machine in Full Screen mode.

What I would love to have is the same behavior for running the VMware guest in "windowed" mode (i.e. non-Full-Screen mode):

  • Configure 2 monitors.
  • VMware shows two windows, one for each configured "virtual" monitor.

Is this possible?

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    Good question. I don't know the answer immediately but am interested to know the solution if any. I own VMware Workstation 10 also and might play around with it a bit when I get home. Upvoted. Might also google around a bit to try and find an answer for you.
    – allquixotic
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 15:28
  • Thanks a lot, @allquixotic. My "research" (read: Googling) lead to no usable results, unfortunately.
    – Uwe Keim
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 15:30

7 Answers 7

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It's sort of possible. There's no way to have a separate window on the host for each guest monitor, but you can have one large host window with multiple monitors in the guest.

  1. With the VM powered off, go to VM > Settings > Hardware > Display. Select "Specify monitor settings", and set "Number of monitors" to 2 or more.
  2. Disable Autofit Guest by going to Edit > Preferences > Display, unchecking Autofit Guest. If you're going to use the VM in full screen mode, make sure to select one of the other full screen modes.
  3. Power on the VM.
  4. In the guest, enable another display. This is going to be OS-specific. In a Windows 7 guest, go to Control Panel > Screen Resolution. You might need to click the Detect button, which should add a new "VMware SVGA" entry to be to the Display drop-down list. Select it, then for "Multiple displays" select "Try to connect anyway...". Click Apply. Now for "Multiple displays" you can select "Extend these displays". Click OK/Apply.

enter image description here

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According to this link: Multiple (virtual) Monitors

The following command line tool can be run from within the guest VM:

cd "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools"
VMwareResolutionSet.exe 0 2 32 , 0 0 2000 2000 , 2000 0 2000 2000

That will create 2 screens with a resolution of 2000x2000 each. The second screen will be placed on the right-hand-side of the left screen.

I can confirm that this works in VMware Fusion 12.1 on macOS.

You can find the latest usage of "VMwareResolutionSet.exe" in the Knowledge Base article: Increasing virtual machine display resolution to a custom resolution beyond the maximum resolution listed in Microsoft Windows (2058577)

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I never tried it too, but I gave 90% of a "yes" answer. And I gave a 90% chance too, that you will very happy, I you try the "unity" feature of the vmware workstation. That makes possible to the apps on your guest to simply show their windows on your host.

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    Thanks. Usually, this would be sufficient. In my scenario, I have to test an app how it behaves when running on a system with multiple monitors (desktops), so Unity mode does not help me here, unfortunately to do a realistic test (compared to a HW box with two monitors).
    – Uwe Keim
    Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 20:23
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As far as I know you can only have multiple monitors if your host machine has multiple monitors in VMWare. I would agree and say that being able to have multiple virtual windows on one host monitor would be useful for windows. However, in linux you can freely display all work-spaces at once and adjust amount as needed so it would really only prove useful for windows.

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  • Thanks, Mike. Would be sufficient for me, if it is useful for Windows only ;-)
    – Uwe Keim
    Commented Dec 23, 2013 at 17:51
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I haven't found a way to do this in VMWare as of Feb 2015, but it's easy to do with Virtualbox, if that becomes a primary requirement for you.

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There is a Cycle multiple monitors option in the View menu. I use it with Ubuntu on Windows and it works perfectly.

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    That's only available in full screen mode, and the question is specifically about running not in full screen mode.
    – jamesdlin
    Commented Aug 29, 2015 at 11:30
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    Yes, you're right. I've moved to VirtualBox since then and it supports multiple monitors much better than VMWare.
    – nima
    Commented Aug 29, 2015 at 15:18
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Open two separate VMware Workstation applications, put one on the first monitor and the second on the other monitor.

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