This program is used to start VMware Workstation 16 Virtual Machines at boot time and suspend them automatically before system shutdown or restart.

Install the necessary packages

sudo apt install jq

Navigate to the /opt directory and clone this GitHub repository as follows:

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/shovon8/vmware-autostart.git
cd /opt/vmware-autostart

Make sure that the /opt/vmware-autostart/bin/autostart shell script is executable.

sudo chmod +x bin/autostart

Change the login User and Group to your own login User and Group name in the vmware-autostart.service file.

[Service]
...
User=<Your Login User name>
Group=<Your Primary Group name>

Install the vmware-autostart.service systemd service.

sudo ln -s /opt/vmware-autostart/vmware-autostart.service /etc/systemd/system/vmware-autostart.service

For the systemd changes to take effect, reload systemd daemons.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Add the vmware-autostart.service to the system startup.

sudo systemctl enable vmware-autostart.service

To automatically start VMware Workstation Pro 16 virtual machines on boot with this program, add the absolute path of the .vmx file of your desired virtual machines in the config.json file. The configuration file is self-explanatory.

{
  "vms": [
    {
      "name": "vm-1",
      "vmx_path": "/vmware/vm-1/vm-1.vmx",
      "vmx_password": "leave this blank if the vm isn't encrypted",
      "autostart": true
    },
    {
      "name": "vm 2",
      "vmx_path": "/vmware/vm 2/vm 2.vmx",
      "vmx_password": "",
      "autostart": true
    }
  ]
}

If you keep a virtual machine opened in the VMware Workstation Pro 16 app, the VMware Autostart program won’t be able to suspend the virtual machine when you shutdown or reboot your computer while keeping the VMware Workstation Pro 16 app opened. It might be rare for people to shutdown or reboot their computer while keeping programs open. But the program could be improved to make sure that the VMware Workstation Pro 16 app is closed before suspending virtual machines.