I have Windows 11 as a guest OS in VMware Fusion. When I press Cmd+E while in Windows 11 guest operating system, windows explorer opens up.
Later to simulate similar behavior in MacOS, I defined a Keyboard shortcut in BetterTouchTool with Cmd+E mapped to Open Finder. Now, when I press Cmd+E while in MacOS, Finder opens up.
At the same time, when I press Cmd+E while in Windows 11 guest OS also, Finder opens up in MacOS. This was expected. But the behavior I aim for is: When I press Cmd+E while in MacOS, Finder should open and when in Windows 11 guest OS, if Cmd+E is pressed, Windows Explorer should open up.
To get this aimed behavior, I added a condition [active_app_name != "VMWare Fusion"] to the Keyboard Shortcut in BetterTouchTool. However, now, when I press Cmd+E, only windows start menu pops up as if only Cmd (meta) was pressed. The Windows explorer does not open up. If I disable he shortcut in BTT, Cmd+E in windows, opens up the windows explorer.
Does anyone know why this is happening and a solution to get the behavior I am aiming for?
I think on windows the shortcut would need to be ctrl+E instead of cmd, but I haven't used Windows in a long time
In general sending keyboard shortcuts to Fusion is pretty problematic, some work, some don't but I'm not really sure what's the current state of this (mostly outside of BTT's control).
Thanks for the quick response. The shortcut in Windows to open Windows Explorer is "Win+E" (Windows key + E).
When I disable the keyboard shortcut in BTT, Cmd+E gets passed on properly to windows guest OS, thereby opening Windows Explorer. Summarizing, these are the behaviors in 3 situations:
Cmd+E shortcut in BTT enabled:
pressing the key combination opens finder in MacOS and in Windows guest OS.
Cmd+E shortcut in BTT enabled with condition [active_app_name != “VMWare Fusion”]
pressing the key combination opens finder in MacOS and in Windows guest OS it pops up the Start Menu (as if only Cmd key was pressed)
Cmd+E shortcut in BTT disabled with condition [active_app_name != “VMWare Fusion”]
pressing the key combination does nothing in MacOS and in Windows guest OS, Windows Explorer is opened.
Since Windows Explorer opens up on pressing Cmd+E when the keyboard shortcut is disabled, I was thinking it is something to do with BTT and not VMware Fusion.
Does the above give description give any more information pointing to the root cause?
I know fusion automatically translates some keys to their windows equivalent when pressing the hardware keys, however I don't know whether it does the same for programmatically generated events.
You could try activating this option for fusion:
