To add a launcher item that runs a single specific virtual machine we can create a new launcher item as it is described here.

In short, to start a Virtual Box machine without the Virtual Box Manager we may add the following command to start the VM in the Exec= section of a .desktop file we can place in ~/.local/share/applications:

[Desktop Entry]

Name=the name you want it to have

Comment=

Exec=VirtualBox --startvm 'name of the machine'

Icon=icon name

Terminal=false

Type=Application

StartupNotify=true

After giving the .desktop file executable permission we can now start our virtual machine by double-click on it, or we can drag it on the Launcher or the Desktop for convenient access.

In more recent versions of VirtualBox the functionality to start a virtualmachine was moved to the VirtualBoxVM application. This needs a change of the EXEC line in the .desktop file tO

EXEC=/usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBoxVM --startvm "name of the machine"

or we may use the tool VBoxManage startvm instead.