If you have a Virtual Machine that has VMware Tools installed and a newer version is available, end users within the guest operating system might see a status bar notification with the following message:
A newer version of Tools is available for this VM
Most organizations already have a well defined process in rolling out new software updates including VMware Tools, so while the in-guest notification about a new version of VMware Tools can be useful for some, it either not applicable or adds unnecessary distractions for their end users. I recently learned that you can disable these in-guest notification by applying one of the following configurations:
Windows
- Disable VMware Tools notification at system Level
- Set the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware Tools\ShowTray to 0 (REG_DWORD)
- Disable VMware Tools In-Guest Notification at the user Level
- Set the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware Tools\ShowTray to 0 (REG_DWORD)
Feedback has already been acknowledge to add this information to the official VMware Tools documentation and that it may be possible to configure these notification settings using the VMware Tools configuration file (tools.conf) in the future, further simplifying any configurations related to VMware Tools.
