Virtualbox Guest Additions with screen resizing

Are you using Virtualbox Guest Additions and you get frustrated because the screen does not resize? We also have come across the same problem. But we have good news, in this article we will provide you with a guide on how to make your screen resize correctly.

As you can see in the image below without the proper screen resizing, VirtualBox is not practical. It is not a pretty picture and it does not help the users to do their work.

Display of Search Engine Result Page with Virtual Guest Additions without screen resize
Search Engine Result Page using Virtual Guest Additions without screen resize

After using our code, your end result should look like the picture below.

Search Engine Result Page of VirtualBox Guest Additions with screen resize
Search Engine Result Page of VirtualBox Guest Additions with screen resize

Over the years we keep coming back to this problem, but it seems the answer changes slightly, so here is an updated version of getting VirtualBox’s guest additions working including, the bits for screen resizing. This following command needs to be executed inside your Debian-based Linux VMs:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11

If the above doesn’t instantly work for you, you may also need to install:

sudo apt install linux-source linux-headers-generic

Reboot, and fingers-crossed, it should work! If it doesn’t, and you installed things before you installed VirtualBox-guest-x11, you will also need to run:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-guest-dkms

We hope this helps you with resizing the screen when using VirtualBox Guest Additions.

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