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Comment by sikim | Hacker News Reader

As someone coming from macOS, the one feature that I miss most on Windows is applications remembering their old positions when plugged into multiple displays. When I first saw this happen on macOS, I thought it was some magic. Now on Windows, I have to constantly drag each window back into its own display every time I plug in/out from displays.

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Window positions? I'd be happy if icons would stay in one place as i plug/unplug displays! To be honest MacOS and linux are the only current consumer OSs that have multi-display handled. And of them, only MacOS properly handles multi-display setups with differing DPIs.

I question that last statement. Not a Mac person myself, but I've noticed that when one of my coworkers plugs their MacBook into the TV in the conference room their resolution becomes so high that they can't see anything.

Some among them know how to get it right, but the majority just open chrome before plugging in and zoom to 500% afterwards.

Possibly a 4K TV that reports its DPI wrong? Or maybe reports it correctly and macos scales everything for 10 DPI

Somebody pointed out that the text on the TV is actually the same size as the text used to be on the Mac--it's just that the TV is mounted too far away from the people for that scale to be the correct one. So I think maybe the Mac and the TV have successfully conspired to achieve some kind of real-space equivalence on the TV (though the Mac is now unusable by whoever is presenting since the fonts are all three times too small).

My point is less technical: when a new display device appears, the computer can't know how that image is reaching users. It could be VR goggles or it could be a jumbotron in a stadium. A better design would focus making it easier for the user to tune the scale, rather than assuming that the Mac knows best.

This was one of the issues in linux-land, that EDID info about DPI cannot be trusted.

Projectors obviously have no idea about the final DPI and TVs often lie, because same board is used across a range of models. It is the TV equivalent of "To be filled by O.E.M." .

I'd be happy if I didn't have to reboot my laptop 25% of the time when I plug it back into the screen on my desk.

What do you have to do to get linux to work properly with multiple displays? I just can't get the set up to work how I want on Arch.

Running 3 monitors here. Mixed DPI (laptop is 4K, both external displays are 1080P). Ubuntu with Gnome running on Wayland. A few of the applications I use still don't support Wayland scaling properly (meaning they need to stay on whichever monitor they were launched, lest their zoom level get messed up) but it's getting better and all of the built-in Gnome stuff works great.

This genuinely took zero configuration on my part, besides perhaps going into the Display control panel and changing the zoom level for the 4K display.

Depends on your setup. I run a fairly custom setup without a DE and such and I just use xrandr(arandr) and saved the layouts. I haven't bothered to make anything happen automatically since I have a few different monitor setups, so I just run the scripts manually.

Use gnome. It just works for me. Either on X or Wayland.

Generally, Linux mint and Ubuntu both get it right

What version of MacOS do you use?

I use High Sierra with 3 external displays, and my windows are almost always in different places when I unplug, plug back in. All monitors are the same model (this might make a difference), but I always plug them into the same port they were connected to previously.

One hypothesis I have is the order I unplug / plug in the monitors matters.

Edit: after some quick testing, I can't seem to reproduce any issues while just briefly leaving my monitors unplugged.

The issue I notice the most is that windows get put back on the wrong monitor. e.g. window A from monitor 1 is now on monitor 2 and window B from monitor 2 is now on monitor 1.

> All monitors are the same model (this might make a difference)

It does: your monitors are likely reporting identical EDIDs. Or, to put it another way, your monitor's manufacturer is incompetent. (Which is sadly quite common.)

Windows remembers my window locations when I plug back in. Using a Surface dock with two Dell Ultrasharps. Maybe as someone else pointed it on OSX, perhaps it's the ID the monitors are sending back to your Windows install and it doesn't know which is which because they don't have a unique identifier?

I think that might be the dock drivers. I remember a universal dock vendor presenting that as a feature.

I'm also using two Dell Ultrasharps with a Surface Dock. I tried updating the driver but no luck for me.

I'm on Windows 10 at work with four displays (2x 27" and 2 x 23") and Windows can't even remember the position of app windows after closing and re-opening the app immediately, don't even have to unplug and replug a display for this it to exhibit this amnesic behaviour.

Isn't it up to each program to ask for its windows to be displayed in a particular place?

(Not up to the OS to override programs and show them where it thinks you want them; “how do I save window position?” used to be a popular question for Windows dev).

Yes, and Windows will try to put an application window where it was if the program asks Windows to do that. If I am remembering correctly. (Big "if")

Why the onus is put on each application to turn this on is not clear to me.

Why wouldn't it be?

OS X will remember & restore a pos with a matching title in a certain app[bundke identifier]

WinApi provides calls to do the same which iirc goes in the registry, but it's not automatic.

It used to work flawlessly on my MacBook pro at work and a couple of months ago ... it just stopped.

Now all the windows stay on the integrated display and I have to restore them myself ... sigh.

When I go out to lunch, windows drops my screens through power saving modes all the way to “off”.

Then it says “huh, screens 1,2 and 3 have disappeared. Better gather all the windows to the primary desktop”.

I have to either disable energy saving, or accept that I need to move my stuff back to screens 2 and 3 every time I’m away for 15 minutes

I haven't used it yet myself, been sitting on my Steam account since I got it in a deal, but apparently DisplayFusion [0] has window position profiles.

[0] https://www.displayfusion.com/

DisplayFusion is a great utility. I actually paid full price and I only use it for one purpose - window management. I have a few shortcuts I set up that allow me to manipulate the active window in multiple ways. I've set this up 2 years ago and I've been using it at home and at work for all this time. I can't say enough good things about the app.

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