VMware Workstation Player not recognized by FancyZones

[ItHurtsToThink]

Environment

Windows build number: 10.0.18362.449
PowerToys version: 0.13.0
PowerToy module for which you are reporting the bug (if applicable): FancyZones

Steps to reproduce

Hold shift key while moving a VMware Player window.

Expected behavior

FancyZones layout should show and VMware Player window should snap to a FancyZone.

Actual behavior

It does not, window moves as if shift is not held.

Screenshots

[enricogior]

Hi @ItHurtsToThink
thank you for reporting the issue.

[enricogior]

I can reproduce the bug when the Shift key is required to enable the zones.
Turning the Shift key requirement off makes the zones appear.
Pressing Shift will not dis-activate the zones.
It looks like VMWare Player is intercepting the Shift key so PowerToys never receives the event.

[enricogior]

There is also a side-effect after dragging a VMWare Player window: the zones activate on resizing any window.

[kjiwa]

I can also confirm this behavior. I'm using VMWare Workstation Player 15.5.1. The VM selection dialog does snap to a zone, but once a VM has started, the window hosting the VM will not snap to a zone.

[enricogior]

There is nothing we can do to fix it, since whatever modifier FZ uses, it gets "stolen" by VMWare and never get processed by FancyZones.
A possible workaround would be to have a list of approved apps that always activate the zones.

[lbreuss]

+1: "A possible workaround would be to have a list of approved apps that always activate the zones."

[kkuhle]

I've been using FancyZones for a few days to replace my old solution for it and it's been great. I am running into the behavior described in VMware Workstation. +1 on a solution

a list of approved apps to always activate the zones seems good to me as well

Edit: The "Use a non-primary mouse button to toggle zone activation" is working great for me. Thanks for adding it!

[AlexKalts]

Just adding a comment on this, using the option "Use a non-primary mouse button to toggle zone activation" worked fine for me. Both the middle mouse button and "back/forward" buttons work.

[ghost]

There is nothing we can do to fix it, since whatever modifier FZ uses, it gets "stolen" by VMWare and never get processed by FancyZones.

To be more specific, do you mean there's nothing that can be done to address the problem of Shift+Drag to activate FancyZones when dragging a VMWare window to a different position (because VMWare hijacks the key/click)?

Or is the problem that FZ cannot detect when the VMWare window is being dragged around the screen? (It does seem to also hijack the Move functionality from the upper-left corner menu.)

A possible workaround would be to have a list of approved apps that always activate the zones.

As others have alluded to, what about adding a different zone target activation mechanism? Currently, the zones appear when shift+dragging a window by its titlebar. What if we could deliberately activate (toggle) the zones with a hot-key? Not for editing the zones, mind you, but for placing windows into zones.

The "Use a non-primary mouse button to toggle zone activation" is working great for me. Thanks for adding it!

I couldn't figure out how to make that feature work to move a VMWare window into a particular zone.

(Aside, PowerToys Run overrides Alt+Space by default, which kicks accessibility in the teeth for those who rely on that keystroke to open the corner menu of pretty much any Windows window going back to at least Windows 3.1.)

[MichaelBertrandINTEGRIM]

A workaround that worked (duh) for me is selecting a VM that is not running, or a folder in the workstation list allows FZ to do the fancy things. Limited testing shows that any running and currently selected VM, regardless of VMware Tools, hooks the keyboard and probably intercepts the shift, as stated above. This is with the current version of FZ. HTH