Here's the situation:
- Open a fullscreen game that has a small resolution (old games for example, or even more recent games made in certain engines like rpgmaker).
- All open programs get shrunk to that resolution every time, and desktop icons also get jumbled up trying to fit into the small window area.
- Even after you close the game, everything stays shrunk and you have to resize everything manually.
Is there any program/Windows setting/workaround that can prevent, fix, or eliminate this problem?
Details for clarification:
This has happened to me three times in the last three days alone, for three separate games.
For example, I just ran a rpgmaker game for the first time in a long time and all Firefox windows, Windows explorer folders, and every other open program got shrunk to 480×600 in the upper left corner of the screen (except Steam for some unknown reason turns out Steam just shrunk to it's smallest window size, which is larger than 480×600). Even things that were minimized to the taskbar were shrunk to 480×600.
As you can imagine this is a big headache, and closing every single program and explorer window that is open every single time I want to use certain games (as a very dumb way to prevent window sizes getting messed up) is not a viable option.
Playing in not fullscreen isn't a viable option either. Games are just too small and so much less immersive when in a tiny window.
I have found a program to automatically revert the deskop icons after something like this happens (DesktopOK) but I've been unable to rectify the window sizes getting messed up.
I do hope there's some kind of a fix for low res window resizing. I can't be the only person plagued by this sort of thing.
Ideas I had that I don't know if they would work:
1. Making a shortcut that automatically opens a game in a new virtual desktop. Nope, turns out opening a low res game in a virtual desktop still results in all open programs/windows getting shrunk in the non-virtual desktop. Although oddly that does not rearrange the desktop icons.
I'm surprised the resolution of something in a virtual desktop would resize everything in a separate desktop. I would have thought they would be independent of each other in that regard.
Ideal solution:
A program that can detect screen resolution changes, and automatically restore everything to the way it was (size and position) once the low res program closes.
Or even better, it can also detect when you alt tab out of the low res program and restore everything to normal. So that you can switch back and forth seamlessly if you need to check something while the game is still running.
Edit: A possible close-to-ideal solution:
A way to "lock" windows sizes for all open programs so they don't get auto shrunk from small resolution games. That would still require re-positioning things but would still be so much better than manually resizing everything.
Slightly off topic, but did some earlier versions of Windows not have this problem when running smaller-than-native-resolution games in fullscreen? I swear I remember explorer windows and open programs being the size they originally were when closing a low res game in… XP maybe?
Best Answer
I use a slightly modified version of this script: https://autohotkey.com/board/topic/112113-dockwin-storerecall-window-positions/
Here: https://pastebin.com/0MuUi5cQ - added ID support so if the window's name has changed since the last save (like switch to another tab in Chrome) it can fall back to id
You can save the windows' size and position before playing and restore it after playing or even if you ALT-TAB out from the game with a hotkey. The best would be if it was automatic, but still it saves you from resizing windows everytime after playing.