I'm a relatively new DisplayFusion user and love the product so far. But there are so many features that frankly I'm having a hard time deciding the best way to approach my biggest problem. I'm posting to seek advice on the best way to use DisplayFusion features to cope with Windows resizing all my windows and collapsing them onto a single monitor.

What I really want most is to somehow tell Win7x64, "Look, I really do have 7 monitors and they're not going anywhere so when I turn one of the things off (or a power glitch or DisplayPort link failure takes one out for a split second), I do not want Win7 to move all my windows from that monitor onto another monitor it thinks is still connected. I want it to just trust my layout and wait for me to turn that monitor back on!

This happens most frequently when my power settings automatically turn off the monitors during periods of inactivity. Then I move the mouse to wake the system up, Win7 turns the monitors back on, but one of them is an older model that takes a few seconds to resume. Win7 incorrectly concludes that monitor is no longer connected to the system, and repositions all my windows from that monitor onto other monitors it thinks are still connected.

I can see that one way to address this would be to set up monitor profiles and use the save window positions/restore window positions functions. But that means navigating through several menus each time I wake my system up from monitor power-down. I'm hoping there's a better way to train DisplayFusion to just know where my windows are supposed to be and automatically move them back there when Win7 screws it up. Or maybe there is a way to program function keys so I could just wake the system up then use some hotkey to tell DF to put everything back where it's supposed to be?

I'm aware that I could set up DF profiles to just use a black screensaver instead of dimming the monitors, but I have 7 30" screens and I'm in Mexico where electricity is very expensive. Dimming the monitors through the power settings in control panel literally concerves 630 watts of electricity, often for many hours at a time, so a black screen saver really isn't equivalent. The power savings is well above $100USD per month!

Anoher question/request for new feature: I see that DF allows me to set up audio settings in my profiles, but I don't see a fast/easy way to change them. I would love to have a little tool somewhere on my desktop with radio buttons for speakers vs. headsets. Better yet, put those radio buttons on my window title bars so that I can separately configure which audio playback device is used on a per-application basis. I think that may already be supported per-application, but I don't see a way to change it quickly without having to navigate several menus. It would be way cool if each window's title bar had radio buttons on it for the audio device to associate with that window.

Thanks in advance for any advice on how to best leverage DF's features to address these issues.

ET

Keith,

Thanks so much for the reply. I'll put this info to work right away.

Just one question/concern: Does "Save window positions" and "restore window positions" preserve both the position and size of all the windows? When you are running inside a VM, Windows often gets confused and temporarily thinks the desktop is only 640x480. This causes all the windows to be resized to fit in that size desktop. If DisplayFusion does not already preserve both position AND SIZE of windows with this function, then please consider this a request for that feature to be added some day.

Thanks again for the excellent support!

ET

Keith,

Thanks so much, but I couldn't get the audio part to work. Here's a cut/paste of how I configured the array:

// Specify your exact audio device names here (as seen in the tray > Audio Devices menu)
string[] audioDevices = {
"Speakers (2 - Realtek High Definition Audio)",
"Speakers (8 - CS50/CS60-USB Headset)"
};

These match what I see in my tray>Audio Devices list. When I type the hotkey, it brings up a dialog that shows the first one as selected (accurately matching my default device), and when I click on it, it allows me to change it to the headset. But then I click OK and nothing changes - the audio stays on the Realtek speakers.

Feels like the 2nd entry isn't correctly matching to what the system calls it, but I have checked it over and over and I think it's an exact match. Any ideas?

Thanks,
ET

In case you need it, attached is a screen capture of my Audio Devices dialog scrolled down to the relevant device.

KEITH: NEVER MIND!!!

I figured it out on my own - there was an extra space in the 2nd item. Changing it fixed it.

Thanks anyway!

ET

Keith,

I'm sorry to be such a pain... Now that I got it "working", I realize it's not quite an ideal fit for what I needed. What would be much better than the prompt dialog would be for the function to be "Switch to next Audio Device in list". In other words, I want a button on the window title bar that toggles between speaker and headset without having to go thru the business of displaying a dialog, clicking it to get the dropdown list, choosing the device, then having to click OK to select it.

I used to be a software engineer but that was a LONG time ago, before C# was even invented, so I'm afraid I don't know how to fix it on my own. What I have in mind is to just switch to the next device in the array when you use the function key or title bar button, without any further need for UI interaction. Can you suggest a code change to affect that outcome?

Of lesser importance, I notice that the title bar buttons only seem to work on the main window of the first instance of an app. For example, I have two instances of Firefox running. Only the first instance has the DisplayFusion title bar buttons. Child windows and 2nd instance of the main app window don't seem to get them. This point is of less importance to me; I can get the audio to do what I want by choosing a different window to click. I'm just reporting it FYI because it feels like a more generic bug in DisplayFusion. This is not just for my custom button - also true for the default DisplayFusion one that moves the window to the next monitor.

Thanks in advance!!!
ET

Thanks so much Keith, you guys are awesome!

2 screen captures are attached. The first one shows two instances of Firefox. Only the first one launched has the DF buttons on its title bar. The second screen grab is of a bunch of child windows (financial market charts launched by a parent trading application). None of them get DF buttons on them...

Thanks again!
ET

Hi Keith,

I'd be happy to send you info as you request if that helps you to diagnose an issue that might improve the product or help others. But just to be clear, I have solved my own personal problem by binding the function to hotkeys. It does appear that something is wrong with the buttons on window title bars, and I'm happy to help diagnose this, but I want to be clear that I personally don't require a solution to that problem at this time.

Something I am having issues with is that I am running DisplayFusion both on my host system and in my primary VMware VM. The Switch to Next Audio device (custom) script you recommended solved my problem on the host system, but the VM only sees one "Playback device" in Windows. The manual way to switch from headset to speaker is to use the VMware taskbar and change the VM's settings to use a different host playback device. Obviously the Switch to Next Audio device script doesn't know how to tell VMware to do that.

This is more of a VMware question than a DF question, but since you're batting a thousand so far, I'll ask it anyway: Do you know any way to make multiple host system playback devices visible as multiple playback devices in a VM? If I could figure out how to do that, the scripted function you suggested could be used to select among them.

I'll wait to hear from you that you still want me to do the detective work on the title bar issue. Again, I'm happy to help but there is no need for the sake of supporting my own needs. If it helps, all those financial charts are child windows of a downloaded JAVA application. I notice not that neither the parent or child windows have DF icons on their window title bars - could be a JAVA thing?

Thanks again!!!
ET