A running machine's page shows its display. Machines reaches the display through libvirt, which hands over a socket already past authentication, so a display needs no listening socket, and new machines are made without one. The console speaks SPICE where QEMU has its SPICE modules, and VNC otherwise.
A click in the console gives it the keyboard, with the shortcuts the desktop would otherwise take, such as Super and Alt+Tab; every key goes to the machine, Tab included. Pressing Ctrl+Alt together and letting go gives the keyboard back.
F11 makes the console fullscreen while the console does not have the keyboard. In fullscreen, the machine's controls, with keys to send, come down from the top edge of the screen. The console can also move to a window of its own, and save the machine's screen as a screenshot.
With SPICE, the console also:
- plays the machine's sound
- gives the machine this computer's microphone, only where the Microphone switch in the machine's display settings allows it; it is off for every machine until turned on, and changing it reconnects the console
- shares text copied on either side, with the SPICE agent in the guest; what is copied on this computer is offered to the guest only once the console has the keyboard
- asks the guest, through the agent, to take the size of the console
- lends the machine USB devices of the computer Machines runs on, on any connection
- shows the frames the host's GPU renders as they are, with 3D acceleration
A machine whose screen is a passed-through graphics card's can show that screen in the console through Looking Glass, with the Looking Glass switch in the Passthrough group of its details. The guest runs the Looking Glass host application, version B7, and the console reads its screen from the kvmfr device, which the user running Machines has to be able to open. The keyboard and mouse go over SPICE. Scroll Lock works as in the Looking Glass client; held down, it lists the keys that go with it.
The third page shows the machine's serial console as text, for machines without a display and for watching a guest boot. New machines have a serial port for it.