Where to find older Horizon Clients

EDIT: As of 4/1/25 the VMware link no longer functions. Per SOP, Broadcom has been moving everything to locations under their own domain and much like all the rest of the historical information you find in searches it’s gone, buried behind support paywalls or copied into their own forum software.

As part of the spinoff of the VMware EUC division into a standalone company, Omnissa, there was a requirement made by Broadcom that they scrub any reference to VMware by sometime in December or January. As a result, old versions of everything have been pulled, KB articles have been pulled, general chaos is ensuing, etc.

While I certainly have my own opinions of how that buyout was handled in regards to other (much larger) ones I’ve experienced, and how legacy knowledge being dumped into the nether doesn’t benefit anyone that I might elaborate on at some point, the most important and time critical concern for a lot of us is getting our hands on the things our users need to continue to function. Too often, this may involve supporting older computers/clients that either can’t be upgraded, won’t be upgraded and/or are out of our control – one of the big advantages of using Horizon and other VDI solutions in the first place.

Now, the “official” answer from Omnissa for this will always be to open a support case and/or utilize the “Request Older Versions” menu item while logged into customerconnect.omnissa.com, because I’m sure legally, they have to answer that way. For the moment though, there are still some legacy ways to get your hands on the older clients.

Stemming back from my origins in Microsoft PSS, I’ve always been pretty good at digging up information from dark, forgotten corners of databases, search engines, etc. As I’ve seen a number of posts across various forums with, particularly end users, concerned they can no longer find a client that works on their computer, I went digging into what was still available and working in the bowels of the Broadcom knowledge base – so you don’t have to.

So without further ado: https://softwareupdate.vmware.com/horizon-clients/ – Honestly, I do not anticipate this continuing to work for a significant amount of time. Broadcom is already killing off the docs.vmware.com site entirely at the end of the January 2025, email to anyone @vmware.com quit working awhile ago, so if you’re finding this article outside of noon Pacific Standard Time on January 16th, 2025, your mileage may vary.

Some caveats about getting the clients from the link:

• Broadcom may make the site may disappear at any given time, this was linked out of an older support article from around the time of the initial transition
• Only Windows and Macintosh clients are on this site – If you’re looking for Linux, Android or Chrome, you’ll have to go through a support case no matter what
• “What version will work on my older OS?” questions would normally be answered by the Release Notes, most of which are still available at the timing of this post, but you will likely need to refer to the Internet Archive to track some of that information down because of the purge.

_{Disclaimer for anyone reading this who thinks I’m promoting any kind of piracy here: I’m not. This is documented on vendor sites, albeit buried. I’m not claiming any kind of knowledge of whatever legal details exist between the two companies so if you have an issue with Broadcom’s hosting of this software, I would refer you to them.}