Serial console on UTM

Sometimes you just want to copy and paste between the host machine and a UTM console.

Struggling to copy and paste from your host machine to a UTM terminal window? You’re not alone, it’s trickier than it sounds! In this short blog post, I will show you how to add a serial console to your UTM VM instance, enabling copy and paste.

Adding a serial console

Adding a serial console to a VM involves just a few steps:

• Open UTM and create a VM (or select an existing VM)
• Make sure that the VM is stopped and open the settings of the VM.
• Go to the “devices” section of the VM settings
• Press the “+New” button
• Select “Serial” (see figure 1)

After adding the serial console, you can start the VM. While the VM is booting, a new terminal window will open, which is the serial console. In this window, you can interact with the VM’s console just like in the UTM window. With one key difference: you can now easily copy and paste text between your host machine and the VM console!