Mouse capture on unsupported OS is confusing

[giovariot]

Describe the issue
I've recently tried an old linux distro (specifically Mandrake 8.2) which probably didn't have any support for vm mouse. I thought for days that the mouse wasn't actually being recognized by the old kernel as only the scrolling wheel and mouse buttons were being detected and the macOS mouse cursor was disappearing when hovering over guest display while the guest os cursor was stuck in the middle of the screen. I realized only a few days later that I actually needed to click on the input device capture button on UTM VM's title bar in order for the mouse movement to be recognized.

In my opinion the current solution is very confusing, as one sees the macOS cursor disappearing therefore expecting it to be captured by the guest. This leads the user into thinking the guest OS is actually the culprit therefore sending the user down the wrong rabbit hole.

I think a clean solution would be to avoid hiding the macOS cursor when the mouse isn't actually being captured by the guest or maybe to enable mouse capture on unsupported guest OS when one clicks over the guest display. I don't know if any of these ideas are feasible but I think I remember VMware Workstation capturing the mouse on unsupported OSes only when clicking into the guest VM, while it automatically detected mouse movement communication without forcing the mouse capture when the guest OS actually supported it.

Configuration

• UTM Version: 4.5.3 (99)
• macOS Version: 14.5 (23F79)
• Mac Chip (Intel, M1, ...): M1

Crash log
The app didn't crash.

Debug log
debug.log

Upload VM
config.plist.zip

[lgrachov]

You need to press the mouse capture button so that the mouse is captured and it moves! This happens on macOS 9. Except I don't know how to show the mouse when hovering.

[osy]

It's actually kinda hard to know "if" the guest is properly rendering the cursor. The host just knows that it's feeding input data to the guest. If there's an issue on the guest side OR if the guest doesn't support mouse at all, there's no way for the host to know.