If your using vmware fusion on mac, do not upgrade to sonoma, extremely serious bug

By Igna Triay, 26 October, 2023

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

If your using vmware fusion, do not upgrade to sonoma, as there is a extremely serious bug.
The vertual machines do not work at all with voiceover enabled.
If you try and start up a vertual machine and voiceover is enabled, as soon as you press start up, the vm will start up for a second, and then it'll crash and take you back to the, start up, button.
However if you try starting up the vertual machine and voiceover is off, the machine will run without any problems whatsoever. However if you then enable voiceover once again when you got the vvertual machine to run, it'll crash once again, and bring you back to the start up, button.
I already reported this bug to apple accessibility, however I need help from yoll here, to report it as well, as this is a extremely serious bug.
Also, using a 2018 macbook pro, intel i7, 32gigs of ram, however that's not of much importance I think.
Edit, here's a screen recording of the bug.
https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZjYlrVZjSwiQi8Eicfxo4TVVpAMC7AogPWX
Also, here's the feedback id, for reference,
FB13303957
If anyone else reports this, reference that feedback ID.
Also for reference, I've tried absolutely everything; completely uninstalling vmware fusion, complete reinstall of macos sonoma, upgrating to the latest version, formating of the drive and reinstalling sonoma completely and reinstalling vmware fusion... Nothing works. And when testing with a sighted person, I was told, that when voiceover was off and he tried starting the vm, no problems; but when he did the same with voiceover on... It didn't start at all. It just made as if it wanted to start, and completely crashed.

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Comments

By Anna D on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

I experienced the same problem on a 2022 M2 Macbook Air. Updating to the new version of Sonoma doesn't fix it. I reported the problem to VMware. They said they took the problem seriously and were working on it. I hope so.

By Igna Triay on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

I cant figure out out how. Do you have a contact email or something so I can report the bug to vmware as well as apple accessibility? I tried using technical support, but cannot do so as apparently I do not have any qualifying products, I'm using vmware fusion player with personal license, so I guess that's why I cannot file a technical support request, so is there any other way of contacting vmware?

By danno5 on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

It sounds more like it could be an issue with the actual program itself, rather than with macOS.
In this case, the input that Apple can give you would be very limited.
My recommendation is to contact VMware themselves rather than Apple

By neosonic2 on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

As noted in my VMware Communities thread on the issue (linked to in my above comment), this problem is solely of VMware's own making because they violate a policy Apple has regarding applications that attempt to run "setugid", which is not allowed. VMware Fusion will need to be updated to accomplish their end goal in an alternate fashion that does not violate this restriction. Using "setugid" can have serious security implications depending on the circumstance, so it's understandable Apple has placed restriction on its use. More information can be found in the Communities thread. In the meantime, either use the workaround provided or wait for VMware to release a fix for the issue; neither Apple nor its accessibility team can help here.

By Tayo on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

Ever since upgrading VMWare Fusion to the. Latest version I get an error to the effect that serial 0 will start disconnected. The system still starts up and appears to run just fine, however. I’m running Fusion on a 2017 Pro.

By Igna Triay on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

Ok the explanation above makes sence as to why it’s a vmware problem. I closed the feedback as far as apple accessibility. However, any way to contact vmware to inform them about this?
Also, I was getting the serial will start disconnected. To fix it, go into the vertual machine in the finder, and press vo shift m, and press show package contents. Open the vmware config file, forgot what's its call excatly, but it should say something like config file if you look at the, kind section. Open the config file, and in the line serial 1 it should be set to true. Change true to false, as the vm doesn't have a serial port, and you'll stop getting the, serial will start disconnected message.

By John Abreu on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

Hi,

So yeah, this VMware Fusion issue sucks a bunch, it'll probably get fixed because VMWare has good reason to fix it ASAP, given how widely used it is in corporate environments. Anyway,

How have Voiceover users got on with using something like UTM? Is it something we could use as a stopgap, at least until VMWare fixes this? I don't want to invest in Parallels if I don't have to.

By Brian on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

Disclaimer: I am coming from an Intel-based Dual Boot point of view...

What are the differences between the different Virtual Machine softwares out there?
What are the benefits of one or more over another?
How accessible are they?
What are the linitations, if any?

Thanks in advance. 😀

By Igna Triay on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

UTM could potentially be an alternative but, I tried it and, it’s really, really; slow, but yes, it’s an option.
As far as the various vertualisation softwares out there, here is a breef rundown of the ones i've used or know about,
Vmware fusion, fully accessible and easy to use, its fully accessible out of the box.
UTM, Again, this one is fully accessible with voiceover right out of the box, but as I said, it, at least, to me, feels way more sluggish than vmware, but its usable.
Vertual box, From what I remember when I breafly used it back in the day, its also fully accessible as well out of the box.
With all the above programs, there is no need to use ocr etc, as everything is completely accessible.
Parallels, Haven't tried this one myself as, while many say it beats vmware fusion, I desagree on that myself, but anyway. its a solid options like the other 3 previously mentioned programs but... unlike all its counterparts; it is not natively accessible, which means you have to use ocr to set things up. Once you have the vm set up, you don't need ocr, but you'll have to use ocr to get everything sorted out... which, for me, and this is just my opinion, is not worth jumping through more hoops than necessary just t to be able to do the same exact thing that I can do in vmware, utm, or vertualbox accessibly and without hassle, but yeah. All of the above programs are great and work reliably well, just be aware that Parallels has that caveat as far as native accessibility.

By Brian on Thursday, October 26, 2023 - 05:59

Thanks for the info. Appreciated.

By Jahmal on Tuesday, December 26, 2023 - 05:59

Has anyone found a work around, aside from turning off Voiceover when using Fusion?

By Ashley on Tuesday, December 26, 2023 - 05:59

Funnily enough, I downloaded Vmware Fusion Player yesterday to see if there was a difference between the speed of Fusion vs UTM running Windows 11 ARM. I encountered this bug, didn't find the workaround above, and ended up uninstalling it. I was also disappointed to note that despite implementing a 'get windows 11' feature, VMWare haven't brought over the 'easy install' function to Windows 11 ARM, nor the seamless user folder integration with MacOS. To that end I don't see any advantage over UTM besides perhaps 3D graphics acceleration which may give a slight performance improvement, but running Windows 11 in UTM is near native speed anyway, and UTM has the benefit of QEMU which can emulate other CPU architectures, albeit slowly.

By Sebby on Tuesday, December 26, 2023 - 05:59

Funny how the last thing you think to check is compatibility with VoiceOver, isn't it? Or maybe it isn't, and I'm the idiot optimist 'round here. I'd tried debugging every which way; never occurred to me that such a nasty bug would befall us, specifically for running VoiceOver. If only I'd had this information before I upgraded! Oh hang on, I did--it just never occurred to me to check. Damn and blast! There are no easy workarounds either, since the error occurs in AppKit when VoiceOver is interacting with the UI, so as soon as you start VO again, crash.

Sigh. Anyway, it's still a problem, as of time of writing. Looks like I won't be doing any of the admin I'd been hoping to do this Christmas (hobby project). Thank you, Apple, for introducing a security check I couldn't give two hoots about. I know Fusion isn't your product, but really, don't fix what ain't broke with more stupid security checks I can't disable. VMWare know about the problem, thankfully. And if you're willing to run as root, it's technically possible still to use Fusion, albeit you will have to do some work to set up the root account and run Fusion in a very insecure fashion, if you're comfortable with that. Perhaps now's as good a time as any to learn qemu/UTM? I only need to run Linux, anyway.

By Sebby on Monday, February 5, 2024 - 05:59

So there’s activity on the VMWare Communities thread discussing this, here.

I have yet to try the latest Sonoma beta to see if this is fixed, as suggested. Anyone else tried it yet? I probably will eventually, if not.

By a king in the north on Monday, February 5, 2024 - 05:59

OK, good news. Tried the latest beta and it finally works. I was able to boot into the UEFI boot manager. I used an empty vm to test. Should I test something else?

By Igna Triay on Monday, February 5, 2024 - 05:59

When you say tried the latest, do you mean the vmware fusion beta, or the macos beta?

By Sebby on Monday, February 5, 2024 - 05:59

Latest Sonoma beta. Fusion is still at 13.5.0.

And I'm pleased to hear you can start a VM! As long as it's started and staying started, it's probably fine no matter which VM you use, but sure, give it a try. Grab the latest Windows 11 VM from Microsoft and run that if you'd like to try using Windows.

Two months. That's progress! And just when I needed it too ...

Thanks for confirming!