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Comment by spenvo | Hacker News Reader

PSA: Big Sur forgets where apps' windows are when plugging back into an external display

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/651131?answerId=64... https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/jt0gjk/big_sur_forge...

I've been on the public beta of Big Sur for months (and issued Feedback Assistant bug reports on this). As of 11.0.1, there's still a dealbreaker bug for people who use external monitors.

If you unplug an external display and then plug it back in, none of your apps' windows (which were on the external display’s Space beforehand) are visible or where they used to be. The external monitor’s Space usually appears completely empty.

I genuinely hope Apple fixes this ASAP.

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If you're a stickler for keeping your windows neat and orderly like I am, you may want to check out Yabai (+ skhd):

https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

I used to use BetterTouchTool and Stay to do this, but after a co-worker tipped me off on yabai+skhd, I've been extremely pleased and rarely have to think about window placement (took me a while to get the config "just right", of course).

I haven't tried it on Big Sur, but because of the way yabai can assign windows to spaces, I don't believe you'd face this issue.

As a developer who makes an app that specifically places windows on external displays, i have to disagree with you(r level of confidence). MacOS's APIs have become unreliable on external displays in 11.0.1

I use a combo of phoenix [0] and displayplacer [1]. displayplacer is used for making sure my monitors are arranged correctly and I wrote a small script in phoenix (that I bind to a hotkey) that moves all my windows into the right spot, as well as keybinds to resize my windows for tiling purposes.

It's not perfect but it works pretty well for me, I'll have to look into yabai some more, it seems interesting.

[0] https://github.com/kasper/phoenix

[1] https://github.com/jakehilborn/displayplacer

I hate the fact that this needs to be an additional purchase and not part of the core OS. Windows and most Linux desktop environments are years ahead of macOS in terms of managing window placement. It doesn’t feel like macOS has advanced much in that department since it’s initial release in 2000 yet Windows has snapping, easier tiling, less glitchy multi monitor support....and this is coming from someone who hates using Windows!

I really wish Apple would give their core OS a little TLC. These days Apple feels more like 90s/00s Microsoft with the continuous chasing of shiny new things rather than fixing any of their existing tech.

> Windows and most Linux desktop environments are years ahead of macOS in terms of managing window placement.

I don’t understand. Windows has no ability to remember window positioning on screens to the point where I dread undocking my laptop because of the wasted time spent rearranging everything. The same way I dread it when Windows goes to sleep.

What version are you using? I haven't had any of these issues for a long time with Windows 10. I also have some weird configs going between an external monitor upstairs and a KVM-based setup in my basement office.

It looks like yabai (mostly) works on Big Sur: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/issues/589

I love using HammerSpoon for this sort of thing. Not for the faint-hearted to get to a point where you're happy with the configuration, but it's a total Swiss Army knife for scripting just about anything on your system, from window placement/moving to changing DNS or proxy settings when connecting to different networks, to preventing sleep, etc. It pretty much does the job of 15 other tools I might need to install otherwise. Yeah, you need to learn Lua (easy), and be willing to invest a bunch of time in it initially for setup, but once you have done that, you won't want to go back!

I am currently using Yabai without disabling system protection as my company would not approve of disabling system protection. I wish many of its features were possible without it. It's _better_ than nothing, but it's still pretty bad without disabling it.

I've had this problem for all of 10.15 too, but using an eGPU with all my monitors connected to it. Simply putting the display in sleep mode is enough for macOS to forget where all my windows are when I return. You don't even need to disconnect.

That sounds awful. I can say the situation gets more hopeless in 11.0.1. I'm a Mac developer so have tested this behavior side-by-side with Catalina and even Mojave, and Big Sur has unique problems

Thanks, this is actually my favourite MacOS feature and I don't wish to go without it until they fix it!

Thank you. I'm definitely not upgrading yet.

Yes, the biggest surreal challenge of the 20th century is screen rotation and a second monitor, because that's not part of the original OS design. I am having similar problems while developing my phone operating system and one audio channel for multiple events in the same time like call ringtone, alarm clock, speakerphone, recorder. Every early version of android / ios did not work properly with sound and it took years until the problem was resolved.

I’m not sure exactly what you mean so maybe I’m missing the point, but pre-NeXT Mac software handled multiple monitors back in at least the early 90’s, maybe even the 80’s. A friend of mine had 4 displays on his Power Mac 8600 for example. I wouldn’t call this a new challenge (for Apple at least), but rather a disappointing regression.

My IBM 8088 had dual monitors (1 graphics card per display, monochrome and EGA).

Frustratingly, this has also been happening in Apple's open source xorg server for like a decade. Whenever I unplug from my external monitor I just kill it and restart with `xinit`.

https://www.xquartz.org/

This doesn't happen to me, though admittedly, I'm using an iPad with SideCar as an external display. Whenever I connect to it, it restores the last window arrangement that was in use when the iPad was last connected.

I use Amethyst, as advised by another commenter here. It places and sizes windows automatically. Crazy good.

It’s great, or it was. Just refuses to work on my Mac now. It runs, but does nothing.

Have you checked Accessibility options? I think lots of software that needs this enabling for it silently fails if it’s not enabled.

Pretty sure I did, but good shout, will try it again.

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