VMCtrlV

A script that pastes text into a VM by imitating a keyboard. Takes text from your copy-paste buffer and uses uinput to enter it.

Reasons:

• You don't need to install guest utils in your VM if all you need is copy-paste.
• You don't leak all the host OS clipboard contents to the VM
  • VirtualBox auto-syncs host OS clipboard contents to the VM OS, even when the VM isn't active. As a result, software running in the VM can snoop on the host OS clipboard contents, which is a security flaw.

Requirements:

• Linux
• X environment
• Python3
• uinput support (might need to load the uinput kernel module)

Dependencies :

• Ubuntu 20.04

1. sudo apt install python3-evdev
2. sudo python3 -m pip install EWMH

Send pull requests to add your own OS dependency install instructions to the README file.

Installation:

• Clone this repo somewhere in your home folder
• Register a keyboard shortcut in your WM (window manager) so that it runs this script when a key shortcut is pressed
• This script detects VirtualBox windows by default, edit it if you need to make it work with VMWare/QEMU/whatever
  • then, send a pull request showing your changes to me so that I know how to better incorporate them to make the script universal.

Usage:

1. Press your key combination of choice
2. Switch to a VM
3. Observe the text being auto-typed

Steps 1 and 2 are interchangeable.

Also, if you're already in the VM while pressing the key combination, release all shortcut combination keys quickly to avoid cursed stuff from happening.

License

GPL v3 or later