Customizing VMware Horizon Client Labels

So your boss walked in the door and said “we need to implement this 2FA or MFA thing for our Horizon environment” and proceeds to leave and grab a coffee. Although this technology has been around for some time, the year of 2019 has certainly given rise to this buzzword and its all the hype. While this post is not about how to setup RADIUS or configure your Horizon Connection Server you can read about all that here: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon-7/7.9/horizon-administration/GUID-70879B1F-1DB3-45EA-8D12-C93906F11959.html

Once you enable two-factor authentication on your Horizon Connection Server, you fundamentally change the Horizon Client logon experience including it’s appearance. From your Horizon Administrator Console you do have the option to enter a label, which you can see in my example is “Enter your 2FA”

You can see this reflected in my Horizon Client at initial logon

In many cases I’ve been asked by customers for some ability to modify the Horizon Client labels, for example changing the word “Passcode” to “Password” or something of their choosing. If you are using Windows based clients, you’re in luck with some registry tweaking!  First you will need to open your registry editor (regedit) and create a subkey at the following location

HKEY_CURRENT_UER\Software\VMware, Inc.\VMware VDM\Client\AuthLabel

Below are the list of string value (REG_SZ) keys you can create to suit your needs

AuthHeader = text field

UserPasscodeLabel = text field

UserNameLabel = text field

EnterPasscodeHeader = text field

NextCodeLabel = text field

Here’s an example of the changes I made

Now when I launch my Horizon Client success! Time for that coffee!