The first command unlocks all possible display resolutions for virtual machines. VBoxManage controlvm 'Machine Name' setvideomodehint Width Height Bpp VBoxManage setextradata 'Machine Name' 'CustomVideoMode1' 'Width x Height x Bpp' You need to execute the following commands: VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution any Our readers might be familiar with this tool from the article How to resize a VirtualBox HDD image (VDI).

To bypass this limitation, you need to use the VBoxManage tool, which is a console application to tweak virtual machines on the fly and offline.

As you can see, it is not listed in available display modes in my setup: Scale mode with xfwm4's full-screen option gives you a 'native' experience.Let's say I want to set the display resolution in my Windows 10 VM to 1366x768. Success! I can now run full screen, scaled resolution guest operating systems. This means the window decorations are taken away and the contents of the window are resized to fill the display. Luckily, my Linux window manager (xfwm4, the window manager of the XFCE desktop environment) supports putting any window full screen, whether the window wants it or not. This window could be maximized, but it couldn't be made full screen. On my system, going into Scale Mode put the virtual machine into a window on my screen. There's one quirk to it, though: Scale Mode and Full Screen don't work together. So it seems VirtualBox has finally added Scale Mode (available in the 'Machine' menu along side Full Screen and Seamless modes). instead of the game's display stretching across your whole monitor, it stays at 640x480 pixels and is centered on the screen. If you were running a Windows 3.1 virtual machine at an 800圆00 screen resolution, and you put the VM full-screen, this is what it would look like on your 1366x768 monitor:Īnother example: even on supported guests, running an older game like Starcraft (which runs in a resolution of 640x480) had this problem too: if the VM is running Full Screen and you start Starcraft. Here is an expertly Photoshopped demonstration of what I'm talking about.

When it can't do that, it will just display the screen at its literal resolution and put a black margin to fill in the extra space. Guest Additions for supported OS's install extra drivers for the virtual machine, so that when you put VirtualBox into 'Full Screen' mode, the guest OS will automatically increase its screen resolution to fit your display. One easy example is for running an old operating system (older than Windows 2000) that isn't supported by VirtualBox, so that there are no Guest Additions for it.

I don't know how I missed this, but apparently VirtualBox finally supports a 'Scale Mode.' Bumped the timestamp to make this post new again.

Virtualbox full screen issue