displaymacos
I connect and disconect my MacBook Pro from a number of external displays each day. Each time I connect or disconnect the size, shape, and positions of windows and Desktop icons become disorganized and they end up in different places scattered all over the place. How can I keep my windows and icons from moving when connecting and disconnecting from external displays?
Are there settings in Lion to control this? Are there third-party apps that fix this?
I don't have an external monitor to test this on, but you could look at an app called Swapp that purports to be able to swap the contents of an external screen onto your main display. I'm not sure if it works with more than 1 external monitor, but in theory you might be able to switch to a 2nd desktop on your MBP, and swap the windows from an external monitor onto it, hopefully being able to repeat the trick with a 3rd monitor on a 3rd desktop space.
There is also Display maid which looks similar.
Both have free trials.
You could also try this relatively simple but manual trick to shove windows to another desktop space, either before removing your external monitors or after:
Enable Desktop Space control keys in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Mission Control, check the boxes as follows:
To move windows, click and hold on any window titlebar and hit Control+2, Control+1, or Control+3 to instantly bring the chosen window to the desktop corresponding to the keyboard shortcut
I do use Stay and am happy with it :)
But I also use another app that I really like called Slate ( https://github.com/jigish/slate ). Slate is open source (and free), and does allow to define things like Stay (profiles: layouts of windows - which I think will fit your needs), but also allow move windows with keys combinations, and many other interesting things...
I also have dual display setups and managed to get things working fine with Stay. I have 3 setups two in dual display and one without external display and it works just fine, restoring the windows to their positions when I connect a particular profile (I previously configured... I had to create some simple rules). I use Slate for moving windows around with the keyboard... I think it is a good combination :p
Cheers!
Best Answer
Disconnecting the external display should not affect the positioning of windows and icons that are not on the external display, unless you have it set as your primary display. To set the internal display as primary, go to System Preferences → Displays → Arrangement and drag the menu-bar image (the white stripe) to the internal display. This will, of course, cause the menu bar and Dock (unless your secondary display is below your primary display) to be on the internal display.
For a window that is positioned on a secondary display, if you minimize the window to the Dock or hide its application before disconnecting, and reconnect before making it visible again, then the position of that window will be preserved. I find this quite useful.