How to push/show notifications from the guest OS to the host OS in VMware player

Question

I am wondering if there is any way to get VMware Player to blink or show a message in the window title or perform some similar notifying action whenever there is some activity inside the guest operating system.

I run a Windows VM on a Linux box. If I am working on the host OS and an email or IM or any notification appears on a window inside the Windows VM, there is no way for me to be notified of that in the host OS. I am wondering if there is any practical solution to this or if this is an intrinsic limitation of virtualization. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Answer 1

This is an intrinsic limitation of type 2 virtualization, if you're able to get out the virtual machine it means something went wrong in terms of security.

BUT, you can still solve your problem. Both the host and the VM are connected to the Internet (and sometimes connected on the same internal network). You have a common resource, so they can communicate. The easiest solution in your example is to use an external notification service like pushbullet (if you don't mind it to be hosted elsewhere) or pushjet (if you want to self host).