How do I copy and paste text from Mac Host to Ubuntu Guest in VirtualBox?

Question

I cannot copy and paste text from my Mac (host) to my Ubuntu Server (guest) in Virtualbox.

Solutions I tried:

• Enable Bidirectional in Advanced Settings for "Shared Clipboard" and "Drag'n'Drop". Reboot VM.
• Look for a Guest Additions iso for Mac, but none exists.

Neither solution solved the problem. What's wrong?

Solution

There are no guest additions for Mac because macOS is not supported to be run as a guest in a virtual machine on a system other than macOS. In your setup, Ubuntu is the guest system and macOS is the host system.

The guest additions are to be installed in the guest system. Just start your Ubuntu virtual machine and select Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD Image from the VirtualBox command menu to install the guest additions into Ubuntu. After that, copy and paste should work, provided that you activated it in the settings as you described.

Comments

[Gruber]

It's strange that such a simple thing as sending a few keystrokes from the host machine into the virtual machine seems to be impossible.

[flow2k]

@Gruber Agreed - VirtualBox should enable this by default.

[flow2k]

Had to sudo apt-get gcc make perl first. After that it worked!

[Admin]

You might need to restart the VM in order for this to take effect.