Features
Guest agent
Hangar's agent reports the guest's own memory use, shares the clipboard and handles drag and drop. In Linux it also mounts the shared folders at /mnt/hangar. Without the agent, Hangar shows the memory the VM takes on this Mac instead.
Who has it
- Hangar's macOS images come with it, together with the Command Line Tools and Homebrew.
- Linux cloud images get it through cloud-init; new Windows VMs while Windows is installed.
- For other VMs, install it yourself (below).
Install or update it
Choose Virtual Machine › Install Guest Agent…, or run hangar setup <vm>, which shows what to run in the guest. Hangar shares a read-only Tools folder with every VM:
| Guest | How |
|---|---|
| macOS | Double-click Install Hangar Agent in /Volumes/My Shared Files/Tools. It asks for your password only to install the Command Line Tools and Homebrew. |
| Windows | Press Windows+R and run Z:\Tools\hangar-agent.exe. Windows can't start programs from File Explorer on the shared drive, and asks for permission for the Windows Command Processor, which runs the installer. |
| Linux | Run the one-line sudo command Hangar shows, which mounts the shared folders and runs /mnt/hangar/Tools/hangar-agent install. |
When Hangar brings a newer agent, the same menu item reads Update Guest Agent… and the steps are the same. Hangar never signs in to these VMs for you.
Shared clipboard
Turn on Virtual Machine › Use Shared Clipboard while the VM is stopped. Hangar's agent shares plain text in both directions in every guest (Linux: GTK 4 desktops such as GNOME), so what you copy on the Mac is readable in the guest.
Leave it off, the default, for a VM you don't trust.
A Linux guest that already runs spice-vdagent keeps using it.
The agent files
Each release also attaches the Linux and Windows agents (hangar-agent-linux-arm64, hangar-agent-windows-arm64.exe). Those files aren't signed, only listed in SHA256SUMS; Hangar installs the copies inside the signed and notarized app, which are the ones to trust.
The agents are written in Rust and live in their own repository, hangar-guest-agent.