enables you to drag and drop content from the host to the guest, and vice versa. For this to work the latest version of the Guest Additions must be installed on the guest.

Drag and drop transparently allows copying or opening files, directories, and even certain clipboard formats from one end to the other. For example, from the host to the guest or from the guest to the host. You then can perform drag and drop operations between the host and a VM, as it would be a native drag and drop operation on the host OS.

At the moment drag and drop is implemented for Windows-based and X-Windows-based systems, both on the host and guest side. As X-Windows supports many different drag and drop protocols only the most common one, XDND, is supported for now. Applications using other protocols, such as Motif or OffiX, will not be recognized by .

In the context of using drag and drop, the origin of the data is called the source. That is, where the actual data comes from and is specified. The destination specifies where the data from the source should go to. Transferring data from the source to the destination can be done in various ways, such as copying, moving, or linking.

When transferring data from the host to the guest OS, the host in this case is the source, whereas the guest OS is the destination. However, when transferring data from the guest OS to the host, the guest OS this time became the source and the host is the destination.

For security reasons drag and drop can be configured at runtime on a per-VM basis either using the Drag and Drop menu item in the Devices menu of the virtual machine, as shown below, or the VBoxManage command.

Drag and Drop Menu Options Drag and Drop Menu Options

The following drag and drop modes are available:

• Disabled. Disables the drag and drop feature entirely. This is the default when creating a new VM.

• Host To Guest. Enables drag and drop operations from the host to the guest only.

• Guest To Host. Enables drag and drop operations from the guest to the host only.

• Bidirectional. Enables drag and drop operations in both directions: from the host to the guest, and from the guest to the host.

To use the VBoxManage command to control the current drag and drop mode, see . The modifyvm and controlvm commands enable setting of a VM's current drag and drop mode from the command line.