Sorry, I'm not quite understanding what you mean by it only works in one or the other but not both? Unfortunately, I don't know if anyone on the team is running Windows 11 as a host with VMWare installed in order to reproduce this issue.

Normally, when you use Wmware you don't need to consider manually switching (connecting or disconnecting from the host) the keyboard and mouse between the host and the virtual machine, but when you run Kali Linux in the environment I mentioned before you will have to manually assign the keyboard to run in the virtual machine, after doing so the host can no longer use the keyboard until you manually switch it to the host

And you have the virtual machine tools installed? open-vm-tools-desktop and so forth? Does this only occur with Kali or with any Linux virtual machines where Windows 11 is the host?

Yes, I have tried both open-vm-tools-desktop and WMtools, but the problem still persists. What's confusing is that the bug goes away when you install open-vm-tools or WMtools and don't restart the system, and then the problem reappears when you restart the system.
I've tested Ubuntu and Kali so far, but not any OS other than Windows 11.

It's still not clear to me if the problem is due to open-vm-tools or not. Can you try to uninstall it from the machine, by running:

<pre>
sudo apt remove open-vm-tools-desktop open-vm-tools
</pre>

Then restart the VM.

if the issue is still there, then try re-installing it:

<pre>
sudo apt update
sudo apt install open-vm-tools-desktop open-vm-tools
</pre>

Then restart the VM.

If the issue is still there, maybe try to look at the status of services provided by open-vm-tools:

<pre>
systemctl status open-vm-tools.service
systemctl status vgauth.service
</pre>

Please paste here anything that seems relevant so that we can investigate the issue. Thanks!

Someone reported a similar issue at https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=7695, and it seems to be solved with the latest version of open-vm-tools. Please make sure your Kali system is up to date and has the latest version of the package open-vm-tools (should be version 2:12.0.0-1). Please report back here if it solves the issue, that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I'm very sorry I haven't used kali for a while. i tried to upgrade my open-vm-tools as mentioned in https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=7695 but the problem is still there
┌──(kali㉿kali)-[~/Desktop]
└─$ dpkg -l | grep open-vm-tools
ii open-vm-tools 2:12.0.0-2 amd64 Open VMware Tools for virtual machines hosted on VMware (CLI)
ii open-vm-tools-desktop 2:12.0.0-2 amd64 Open VMware Tools for virtual machines hosted on VMware (GUI)

hello, I'm the reporter of Issue https://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=7695
In my case keyboard working properly on the host system (Windows 11) and the keyboard is not working in VM (kali in VMware workstation pro).
This issue is solved by upgrading my kali vm with "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y"
so try upgrading the kali.

I'm sorry I haven't used kali Linux for a while

I tried the solution provided by @rohitkumarankam but it still happened Finally I switched my VM platform to virtualbox and it is working fine (but I prefer to use wmware) I hope to switch to wmware again when the problem is completely solved Thank you all for your help

This report has been filed against an old version of Kali. We will be closing this ticket due to inactivity.

Please could you see if you are able to replicate this issue with the latest version of Kali Linux (https://www.kali.org/get-kali/)?

If you are still facing the same problem, feel free to re-open the ticket. If you choose to do this, could you provide more information to the issue you are facing, and also give information about your setup?
For more information, please read: https://www.kali.org/docs/community/submitting-issues-kali-bug-tracker/