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I have installed Ubuntu 16.04 on a VirtualBox VM. Now every time I boot it, I get two overlay notifications from VirtualBox:

You have the Auto capture keyboard option turned on. This will cause the Virtual Machine to automatically capture the keyboard every time the VM window is activated and make it unavailable to other applications running on your host machine: when the keyboard is captured, all keystrokes (including system ones like Alt-Tab) will be directed to the VM. (...)

and

The Virtual Machine reports that the guest OS supports mouse pointer integration. This means that you do not need to capture the mouse pointer to be able to use it in your guest OS — all mouse actions you perform when the mouse pointer is over the Virtual Machine’s display are directly sent to the guest OS. If the mouse is currently captured, it will be automatically uncaptured.

These overlay notifications persist from the start of boot untill I click ☓ on them.

Can I disable them permanently?

I'm runnung VirtualBox 5.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 (amd64).

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  • I don't have the screen in front of me but I seem to remember that there were two small icons in the corner of these messages: one X, and one that looked like a crossed-out balloon. You would click the latter, obviously.
    – Jos
    Apr 26, 2016 at 12:40
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    Ah, you're right! Now I feel silly. Please make it an answer, in case someone else will not figure it out (though there's a hint on hover).
    – Nickolai Leschov
    Apr 26, 2016 at 12:53
  • No need to feel silly, that seems like a bubble denoting information. The line on some displays or platforms might be less visible (guess) and busy ones will not notice a few times clicking the visible cross. That's bad user interface design.
    – Hamid
    Sep 19, 2016 at 12:52

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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To remove the message once: click the X button.

To remove the message once and for all: click the crossed-out balloon next to the X.

To reinstate these messages, go to Settings -> User Interface -> File - Reset all warnings (this is my translation, could be slightly different).

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  • Is there a way to do this in a script, such as with vboxmanage?
    – Ben Creasy
    Oct 8, 2017 at 18:15
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    Apparently there is a scriptable command: VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/SuppressMessages "all" but it doesn't seem to be documented ... discovered via forums.virtualbox.org/… Oddly, this option is not showing up in the list provided by vboxmanage getextradata <uuid|vmname> enumerate
    – Ben Creasy
    Oct 8, 2017 at 18:35
  • Looks like getting the precise details on how to suppress messages requires reviewing the source code per forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=66523 Listing global options is possible with VBoxManage getextradata global enumerate
    – Ben Creasy
    Oct 8, 2017 at 20:50
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Moving my comment into an answer:

VBoxManage setextradata global GUI/SuppressMessages "all"

You can see a more granular view of the possible values for GUI/SuppressMessages with VBoxManage getextradata global enumerate - mine looked like:

confirmInputCapture,remindAboutAutoCapture,remindAboutMouseIntegrationOff,remindAboutMouseIntegrationOn,remindAboutWrongColorDepth

before I set it to all.

I figured this out from https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25797&hilit=disable+notification and https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=66523 but apparently all is not documented and was discovered by reading the source.

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  • might be better to delete the comment if so.
    – T.Todua
    Jan 4, 2020 at 19:09
  • I believe comments cannot be deleted after a certain period of time.
    – Ben Creasy
    Jan 4, 2020 at 23:38

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