How To Add Hyper-V Virtual Machine Shortcut on Windows 11 (and Stream Deck)

Update 3/26: Adding a guide for opening/connecting to VM using Stream Deck.

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Shortcut for Windows 11

Ever want to launch a VM directly without opening the main Hyper-V app first? Follow this steps to create a Virtual Machine connection shortcut.

1. In your selected directory, right-click on an empty space to open the context menu. Within New, select Shortcut.

2. In the Create Shortcut window, enter the target settings shown below:

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    vmconnect.exe <Hyper-V Server IP Address> "<Name of VM>"

where <Hyper-V Server IP Address> is the host IP address of the Hyper-V server. And “<Name of VM>” is the actual VM name as seen in Hyper-V window.

3. Click Next, and give your shortcut a name:

Below is an example of a shortcut for my Pop!_OS VM in my local machine (Shortcut Properties), where Pop! is the name of my Virtual Machine.

4. Before opening the shortcut though, we need to make it to Run as administrator. Instead of right-clicking and manually running as admin each time, let’s change the shortcut’s Advanced properties:

And that’s it for your shortcut to run your VM.

You can change the shortcut icon and/or you can move or copy the shortcut to show in your Start Menu (either one of the paths below).

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    C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
    C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Using Stream Deck to open VM Connection

The shortcut created above can be used as the App/File for the Open function of the bundled System plugin for StreamDeck. As seen below:

Using BarRaider’s Advanced Launcher

This requires installing the above-mentioned plugin, found here: Marketplace or Old Plugins Page (note: both are version 1.8 as of this writing).

Once installed, add an Advanced Launcher button into your Stream Deck and do the following:

1. Customize your button icon and give your button a Title. Or not.
2. In Application > Choose file…*, you need to navigate to C:/Windows/System32/ and choose vmconnect.exe
3. In Arguments, type in
   <Hyper-V Server IP Address> "<Name of VM>",
   where <Hyper-V Server IP Address> is the host IP address of the Hyper-V server. And "<Name of VM>" is the actual VM name as seen in your Hyper-V server.
   
   (Note: Stream Deck might remove the double-quotes in cases where the VM name has no spaces)
4. Check the Run as Administrator checkbox.

In my case, as seen below, I customized my button properties further:

• Instances: Checked
• Max Instances: 1 (since launching it will force disconnect previous instances)
• Bring to front: Checked (Stream Deck will try to make the VM window to front - or flash the taskbar icon)

That’s it for adding a Stream Deck button to open your Virtual machine!