Thank you so much for posting this. I've been wanting to do this for a few years (since the day I downloaded displayfusion). Works like a charm.

So, I thought it was working like a charm. Turns out that the time interval trigger is ignoring the monitor profile condition. DisplayFusion saves my window positions regardless if I'm docked or not. I started a discussion over here: https://www.displayfusion.com/Discussions/View/trigger-time-interval-ignores-monitor-profile-condition/?ID=d2bcc7b0-f025-4674-ab81-4147d433545d

Beta 6 has been released, and it does indeed seem to be working like a charm now.

I don't understand how you can say this. This solution is a hack. First of all, now I get a notification every time the window state is saved! Also, if the window positions are lost if last save was done during these 2' intervals. And if I have multiple window profiles then it gets more complicated and unreliable.

I think it would be easier if, instead of restoring windows to their last position, to restore their initial positions by re-applying the window creation rules.

Papadi, I agree that if you have more than one monitor profile you want to save, this is not a good solution. However, you can disable the pop up balloons in advanced settings > General > Don't Show Tray Icon Notification Balloons. I've actually had the balloons disabled for years, so didn't even notice this was happening.

That's a good tip. Still this is a hack though. I was expecting a better solution.

Yes, I would ideally like displayfusion to remember where every window was on every monitor profile, even after the window is closed or the computer restarts. I would love for every window to pop up based on the last known location for that profile. I'm just happy for this baby step (hack).

Seconded; this is how I hoped DisplayFusion would work when I first tried it.

I third this request.

Back in the WinXP days, there was a lovely little application that let you reposition application buttons on the taskbar and remember their location---for every time you ran the application. You could also set window location, monitor location, and window size for every time you used that application. This functionality can't be terribly difficult to implement.

I use 3 monitor profiles: Laptop only, Work (laptop display and external 1920x1080 monitor), Home (laptop display and external 1680x1050 monitor).

An example of what I'm looking for: Every time I open my email program, I want it far left of the leftmost display (my laptop display is always on my left). And I want the taskbar button far left as well, on the proper display's taskbar. And I want that to happen for every monitor profile.

I'm sure people would also like to customize which display they want applications to open or appear on depending on monitor profiles, too. I find the existing functionality unreliable. And the trigger scripts do not seem to work for me.

Please, please implement this seemingly somewhat basic and essential functionality.

Thank you, and thank you for the recent improvements to DisplayFusion. I find it essential to managing my computer working environment.

Are there any news about this topic? This hack never worked on my machine. I don't know why.
Window positions are saved every two minutes (I see the corresponding notification). But for some reason the trigger that is supposed to restore the positions never runs, even though I see that the monitor profile is restored and appears as selected after docking. I added some 'Show Notification' steps to my trigger for debugging purposes and they don't show up either.

Papadi, I had trouble with my initial trigger as well. I don't know what caused it (maybe I had the wrong profile selected or disabled the trigger on accident). I deleted the trigger and started over. The second time everything worked. If you already tried starting over, sorry, I have no other suggestions.

Not working for me either, and it's really a pain to reposition 10-20 windows every time I redock my laptop...

For those having trouble with this, I could not get it to work until I created a monitor profile when the laptop was not docked. The "undocked" profile is not in any trigger or anything, I just created it and saved and after I docked it worked.

Is there a way to disable the notification appearing every two minutes now??

Yes, but it disables all popups, not just that single popup. Settings > Advanced Settings > "Don't Show Tray Icon Notification Balloons" > double click.

Thanks @tpolz!
Another thing is that restoration of the layout takes quite long... it processes roughly one window per second - so it's necessary to not to touch the pc for a while until it finishes layout restoration process.
Could it be optimized in some way? e.g. don't touch the windows which are already in correct place (same position, screen and size as in the saved layout) and restore all the others simultaneously, not one after another?

It doesn't take that long for me. It only takes a second or two to restore all windows to the correct location. Maybe it's just a difference in our hardware? Hopefully, the developers can help you out.

It's quite usual for me to have ~20-30 windows open. But the issue is I'm seeing that even apps which are at the same exact place (screen) and size (maximized) as they have been saved with, they are getting focus one after another, maximizing again.
Maybe it's because after I dock the laptop, one of the external screens becomes the "main" one. Then the OS moves all apps to the main screen, and then DF kicks in to restore the layout. I think DF should just ignore the windows which are already positioned correctly, not focusing them / forcing resize.

I suppose that some more debug info from my side could be useful, I may also try to record a video showing the issue.

@Douglas @tpolz If you try the "Window Layout Backup" application does it work as you are hoping? One thing I've noticed is that this application is aware of how many monitors were connected when it saved the layout and it indicates the number of monitors on the saved session so you know which state you are going back to. I'm hoping to move to the native DisplayFusion functionality, but I'd definitely like the ability to simply save periodically (I think it does 5 minutes) and restore to any point in time, but default to the most recent save that matches my current "profile" ie: 'docked at 9:17am' a session is captured due to the timer, then I 'undock at 9:20am' for a meeting and a few snapshots are saved while I'm in the meeting, but when I get back to my desk at 10:04am I want it to restore to the 'docked at 9:17am') state, while leaving the windows that I opened while in my meeting alone if they weren't ones I had open prior to undocking. If I did have them open prior to undocking but I manipulated them I would expect their positions to be restored to the docked state.

This is not working reliably. I even increased the delay before restoring the window positions but it's maybe working 40% of the time. Quite often I see windows beeing focused and re-arranged but sometimes they keep being on the laptop screen (not the external monitors after dock). It also happened to me multiple times that windows did not restore to correct size. Don't know if this has to do with laptop screen beeing 4K and the two external monitors beeing Full HD or now but however this feature (see also all the other comments) needs vast improvement. The integrated DisplayFusion functions for saving/restoring windows are so badly broken it's really horrible and I disabled it again, not to mention the balloon tipps you have to disable (which can not be disabled per script, so you have to disable all of them). All in all the event managment is also so poorly developed. It's a wonder that the taskbars work quite good. For me atm it's more or less the only reason to keep displayfusion isntalled.

I would also love to see a function in DisplayFusion that would simply allow you to continuously save until it detects 1 monitor then wait until it detects the same number of monitors as the monitor profile has and then load it.

restarted computer and it started working, must have been an issue with something else, I will provide updates if it stops working at some point again.

I've emailed about this with support, but to add to the discussion I think part of the problem is triggers and part of it is monitor profile detection. DisplayFusion seems to have trouble detecting my monitor profile when I dock unless I save the profile (even when I load the profile manually it will apply the settings but doesn't show that that profile is active). After saving the profile though the triggers still don't save or load the window positions.

Per one of the old suggestions above I mapped a key combo to saving and loading window positions, it worked fine when I did both of them.

I'm running 9.0 Beta 3 by the way. I've checked for updates and looked on Steam, was a little surprised to see that there hasn't been an update announced on Steam for almost a year with all of the changes in Windows 10.

I am having some similar issues with Windows 10. I have tried setting the triggers bound to a specific profile to save on a timer, and restore on profile change, and also on startup -- however it never worked.

I then assigned keybindings to save and restore. When I'm logged in, I can save and restore no issue. However, when I save the layout, then move windows around and sign out -- then sign back in and try to restore, it doesn't do anything.

With the automatic trigger, I was able to add a notification saying the windows were restored when it was executed, so I know it was running.

I added about a 20s delay after startup to restore to ensure all the applications were open.

Any thoughts on this? How are the positions saved? Is it not loading them reliably when logging back in, or in some sort of ephemeral storage?

Okay, understood. Could perhaps suffice for my use case to get the new handle when it's executed, purely by saving the caption string. As I'm booting fresh, and letting applications run at startup. My specific case is with an Alienware 15 R3 laptop and the Alienware Graphics Amplifier -- which requires a restart when connecting and disconnecting.

Sorry about the rude language but how the hell do I unsubscribe from this discussion. I'm really just not interested anymore. But neither in the e-mails about new posts in this discussion nor in my profile or in my Discussions there's an "unwatch" function or something.

Who programmed this shitty cms? So please tell me how to unsubscribe or I will block all emails from binaryfortress no matter if I have purchased a license or not, but this is insane.

Thanks for this discussion I just bought this product trying to get this working but it doesn't work as mentioned in this post.
Similar to post #21 I have issues where if any windows are minimized (or hidden into the tray) it doesn't work. When I redock all of my displayed windows go to the proper place but all of the others are resized & wonky.

I am going from a laptop to a monitor all via USB-C. When I dock I only have a single display and I keep my laptop closed.

Anyhow I am seeing the same thing as #21 where it isn't working right. I am on 9.0 beta4 and I am running on the Windows 10 Insider builds of the Windows Fall Creators Update.

Would love to get this working or I might have to look into a refund. Thank you so much!

EDIT: I noticed it doesn't work for maximized windows as well. My setup is I have a docked 34" monitor and I want windows and things positioned to the right. When I undock I want things maximized and other windows on the right. It isn't working as I expect :-/

How do I trigger these actions *manually*?
- save window positions
- restore window positions

I don't want to use timer hacks.

This is an awesome solution! Not sure why anyone calls it a hack. It works great for me and I kinda like seeing the notifications that my profile was saved.

Nice work!

Hi all,

I'm just touching base to see if all is well with this feature. My personal use-case is as follows: I have two different office spaces, each with multiple monitors which I dock to my laptop when I sit down. I would like for my windows to go back to the positions that I set for them in either case.

In essence my question is as follows (having not been able to test): When i sit down and dock my laptop to the two external monitors at Office A, does it know that I'm there by virtue of some ability to detect the individual monitors that I have set for a given profile, or do i have to indicate which monitor profile I wish to load every time I dock?

Also, is it possible to 'mute' the saved profile notification? If the interval is 2 minutes users should have no need to see confirmation... unless the programmers think there's reason that the saving fails a statistically significant number of times?...

Thanks,

Jay

I have tried the different options mentioned here but have a problem with programs, which windows are spreaded on all three monitors I have. When I force energy saving mode and later wake up the system I can see the stored windows configuration for about half a second. All windows on their right positions. And then, all programs with windows on all three monitors switch their windows to the right monitor (not the primary one). That seems for me, that some windows process take over from DisplayFusion. Any suggestions?

Never has worked for me, I've spend more time "hacking" DisplayFusion trying to get it to restore my windows..
So.. it works if the external Monitor windows are halfed, not quarted. I have big monitor and quarted would be prefered but I'm happy with half windows for now

Hi. I wonder if you can help me with some setting up. I am using DisplayFusi9on mainly for this purpose, so my window go back to their windows. But somehow I cannot make this work when I use hibernate. I use hibernate quite often, so I put it to hibernate, and turn off power switch in electricity, which turns off lights etc. When I come back, I turn on power and resume from hibernate. After I login, all windows are in my middle monitor. (I am using 3, 1 notebook and 2 monitors). I have a key marked to restore windows from alst save, it helps only only sometime, and almost never. I just press it and nothing. I have it all setup based on the guilde, actually I did setting up it several times during last year, and now I tried again, but it is still the same. It seems to work, when I dont use hibernate. When I undock PC, or remove connection from monitors, and then connect again, windows goes to their places, which is good. I understand, that maybe this setting is not for hibernate case, but can you maybe point me in the correct place to make it work also Thank you!!!

I have a similar problem where the windows move all over the place after I wake the computer up after the monitors have gone to sleep (computer still running). Is there any way to make a similar trigger for this, or is there any other fix? I've tried a few different triggers but no luck so far.

I have not, however since my computer do not lock on sleep, and I kind of don't want it to, this wouldn't work for me. I guess I can make a keybinding to reset the positions. But is it possible to make som sort of trigger on wakeup? Maybe if system has been inactive for at least x minutes, when mouse or keyboard is used trigger this?

Hi Keith what settings would be different if we wanteed to remove the dock/undock/timer option and add hotkeys to accomplish this?

I have set this up, and I have read the previous replies, but it doesn't seem to be working. The scenario that I have is this:

- I use an ultrawide LG monitor
- When the display goes off when Windows is locked, it seems to recognize a monitor change and makes my laptop screen the primary display (normally, it's the big monitor, with the laptop screen disabled)
- So when I come back and log in, my windows are bunched-up in the top-left. I wait 5 seconds, but they don't get restored. Maybe it's trying to restore them from the lock screen rather than when I log in? I'm not sure if that matters

I think the trigger worked in the beginning, but it doesn't seem to be working now. Does it work even if I disable the notifications telling me that the window positions have been saved? Could it be saving the incorrect window positions? My Timer Interval trigger has the correct Monitor Profile selected, so it shouldn't be running when the laptop screen is active...

I have just checked the "don't run this trigger when the desktop is locked" box on the timer interval trigger, and I will see if that helps.

Hi Keith,

What worked for me was basically changing the trigger to "Desktop Unlocked" instead of "Monitor Profile Changed" and filtering it to the specific monitor profile. I was able to lower the time to 1000ms. I'm really happy with this, since now I can even turn off my monitor at night, turn it back on, unlock, and have the windows where I did the day before! The program also replaced another one I was using to switch monitor resolutions on the fly, so I'll definitely be buying a license.

A neat feature in the future (if not already possible) would be saving to a specific Window Position Profile in a trigger. Loading is possible, but saving to a specific one (even if it already exists) doesn't seem to be.

Hi. Can you please describe how can I use scripts?? Or point me to some guide. Thank you.

I wish I could unsbuscribe from this topic so that I don't get notifications anymore.

I have the same problem as wizonesolutions. Changing the trigger to "desktop unlocked" fixes this.

The only issue is that this trigger runs on startup when DisplayFusion first starts up. Is there any way to not have it run on first start?

It would be great if DisplayFusion has something "built in" to work around this monitor deep sleep issues.

upvote this idea. Please make this happen.

I am using the techniques discussed in this thread, and am using shortcuts to Save and Restore a layout (rather than the timer). However I have the following issue:

When I close an application e.g. Outlook, re-open it and then Restore the Layout, the application is not moved to the position which was originally saved.

How can I make the Restore Layout apply to applications regardless of whether they have been closed and re-opened since the Layout was saved?

Thanks

Andy

Hi Owen,

is the DisplayFusion team planning to make this feature "built-in", in the near future?
At the moment I'm in the trial period of DisplayFusion and I'm impressed by the power of this tool but to be honest I'm wondering why such an important and time saving feature like this is still missing in the core.

I was expecting something like an "automatically handle monitor setups and window positions"-setting, that tells DisplayFusion to automatically save the window positions for all “ever seen” monitor setups and restore them when the monitor setup changes back to an already known one.
I have three monitor setups: one at work with 3 monitors, one at home with two monitors and, of course, the undocked "notebook display only" setup. At the moment I created three profiles but I noticed that I have to maintain these - e.g. when new windows are added, I cannot just override the profile because then changes I made to e.g. the "window title text" get lost.

Why is DisplayFusion so unintuitive and forces me to manually create monitor profiles and window profiles? I think it would be pretty easy for DisplayFusion to handle it all automatically.

You created this hacky workouround here (via triggers and timeouts) in 2016 and since then a lot of people responded to it, had problems with it and created other blogposts regarding / requesting the same feature.
Is there a reason you didn't integrate this feature in the past 6 years?

Regards,
Dave

I have an issue, if turn off my 2nd monitor all tabs on the 2nd monitor move to my 1st monitor (my laptop) when I turn off my 2nd monitor and even worse when I lock my Windows. It's really not fun.

It's really a waste of my time & kills my productivity.

I don't like using custom trigger explained in this article, because I don't like my tab move back to my laptop at all.

I found my own solution by connecting my laptop & my 2nd monitor using VGA cable instead of using HDMI cable. This work well with VGA cable because VGA port works differently compared to HDMI port.

It works like a charm, the tabs stick at my 2nd monitor and won't go back to my laptop if I turn off my monitor or when I lock my Windows.

The limitation using is, I no longer use built-in loudspeaker on my 2nd monitor but it's not a big deal since my laptop already has good built-in speaker.

So for you guys who are experiencing the same issue like me, feel free to try.

Kind Regards

I would like to echo the sentiment here. The current method based on timers is hackish and unreliable. There's no synchronization between the tasks, which means every once in a while the "save window positions" will run after an external monitor has been connected, but before the "restore window positions" has run, resulting in bogus window positions being captured.

As Dave pointed out, this should just be built into DisplayFusion. A small bit of extra logic (e.g. don't save window positions during the first few seconds of an external display being connected) would greatly help. Surely it can't be that hard to implement?

My trial period of DisplayFusion is almost up, and honestly since this is the only thing I really want it's making it a deal-breaker to buy the full version.

Thanks for listening.

Alex

Got it working, but as mentioned, it's somewhat of a hack. At the very least, a way to create these two triggers automatically would be nice.

Give it some time, you'll see how unreliable it is. (I've pretty much given up and am looking for other solutions now.)

So after encountering this same stupid Windows 10 issue, the only workaround for me was to set up the "Save Windows Position" trigger, and then a hotkey for restoring window positions.

Since I only have the "Turn off display" options configured (to 20 minutes) in my power options, while "Put computer to sleep" is set to "Never", is there any way to set up a trigger on "Screen wakeup", or "Mouse movement" or anything like that? Hook it into whatever Windows recognizes as the signal for "Turn screens back on"?

I would much prefer restoring windows to be handled automatically rather than having to use a hotkey for it, because this hacky solution of having to use any kind of software for this in the first place is already annoying enough :/ (but I'm still thankful it exists)

I am looking for a solution to retain my window positions with dock and undock operations, Is there an alternative to Display Fusion for this purpose just to do a comparison study? I am looking for a product with support not an open source one. Display fusion comes with a lot of other features which is not needed and with the amount of manual work needed to achieve this I am not sure how the machine-wide deployment works where different users will have 2 screen or 3 screen monitor profile and it is not feasible to do from user to user.

I set things up according to this guide however it does not work. After monitors sleep, all windows are resized and on only one monitor. I have been using persistentWindows which works, but is kinda slow and laggy (https://github.com/kangyu-california/PersistentWindows)

Try this:

https://github.com/manutalcual/winredock