Client for QEMU/KVM with hotkeys for full screen minimization

Hi all,

I am using Linux to run a QEMU/KVM guest in full screen mode. This works well with both “Gnome Boxes” and “Virt Manager” that I found provide nice GUIs to do this.

I usually work in full-screen mode on the guest VM, but I sometimes need to switch back to the host (i.e. minimize the full screen guest window so that the host’s desktop appears), do something on the host desktop, and then return to the full-screen on the guest (via alt-tab on the host to pick the guest VM window).

Sadly neither gnome boxes nor virt manager seem to have a hotkey to do this? They have a “grab keys” function with Ctrl_L + Alt_L, but that’s it: you can’t for example do “Ctrl_L + Alt_L + M” to minimize the guest window (revealing the host).

Does this exist and have I missed something? Or is there some other way to achieve this? Or maybe there is some other software that I can install to do this?

Thanks!

I use virt-manager but not in full screen mode. I set the resolution to the largest possible depending on the monitor. I’m not aware of any hot key but it’s easy to go out of full screen mode and minimize virt-manager to get access to the host.