I haven't used VMware Fusion in a while, but this evening I noticed that applications from a Windows installation on Fusion 2.x were showing up in Spotlight. At first Firefox (Windows) was the top hit for Firefox, trumping the OS X installation.
Not exactly what I was after.
It's simple to fix, although not terribly intuitive for someone who doesn't use Spotlight much (like me). Open System Preferences, and then open the Spotlight preference pane. Select the Privacy pane and drag your Virtual Machines folder in. By default this is located at \Documents\Virtual Machines\.
Close System Preferences and you'll find that your virtual machine contents will immediately be excluded from Spotlight.
Tags: Apple, Fusion, OS X, Spotlight, VMware
December 10th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Thanks, I have been looking for a way to do this as I run Fusion all day long.
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:51 am
Thanks, good post!
I have also the problem with "open with …" in the finder :(.
Can you help me?
August 11th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Oh, good post! This has been driving me nuts! I had gotten so trigger-happy with spotlight cmd-space shortcut that it became really silly when Fusion kept starting up because the Windows equivalent application was always the top of the list.
I think it is because when the virtual machine starts all the application aliases get renewed… at least that is what I understand by looking in the Today smart folder; there they all are as if I had just opened them all. So I suppose Spotlight is somehow fooled into treating them as regularly accessed.
September 9th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Thank You!!! That was driving me nuts!
January 18th, 2010 at 10:26 am
THANKS, really ;)
March 11th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Thanks for this. First hit on Google, and it's exactly what I was looking for.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:22 am
Great. I was looking for this!
October 18th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Thanks, that was a great help, I've been wanting to get that windows stuff out of spotlight for a while!
November 22nd, 2010 at 9:56 am
[...] Well, luckily there is a way to disable this integration with Spotlight, so you only run Windows when you absolutely intended to do so. Disable Spotlight for VMware Fusion [...]
December 6th, 2010 at 3:20 am
Thank you.
January 11th, 2011 at 1:47 pm
To remove the VMware applications from the finder 'Open With…' menu in Fusion 3.1:
1. go to the virtual machine list (shift-command-L)
(do below for each machine)
2. click 'Settings'
3. click on 'Applications'
4. select the 'Default Applications' tab
5. UN-check "Open your Mac files and Weblinks using your Windows applications"
voila! Why on earth VMware made this a default setting is beyond me.
February 24th, 2011 at 9:07 am
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!
March 6th, 2011 at 7:44 am
Thank you!
To disable "Open with" in Fusion 2.0.8, go to Settings/Sharing on each system. Disable "Allow your Mac to open applications…."