Restoring Windows

Restoring windows is the most commonly performed operation in Stay. Once you have stored windows, restoring windows will instantly return open windows to their stored positions, and resize them to their stored sizes.

It’s possible for a single stored window to match multiple open windows. In this case, all of the open windows that match will have their size and position set to those of the stored window.

Restoring Windows Manually

The simplest way to restore windows is to select “Restore Windows” from Stay’s menu. It’s also possible to configure a hot key to restore windows.

The “Restore Windows” menu item is disabled when there are no windows stored in Stay for the current display configuration.

Each set of stored windows is tied to the displays connected to your computer (and the configuration of those displays) at the time the windows were stored. If you use your computer with more than one display configuration, you must store windows separately for each configuration.

Occasionally macOS will forget a display’s previous configuration. If this happens, Stay will be unable to restore windows for the display, because the correct display configuration is not be active. If this happens, it’s possible to make the correct display configuration active.

Restoring Windows Manually for a Single Application

Holding down the Option key while in Stay’s menu causes the “Restore Windows” menu item to become the “Restore Windows for…” menu item. Selecting this item will restore only the windows of the active application. It’s also possible to configure a hot key to restore only the windows of the active application.

The “Restore Windows for…” menu item is disabled when there are no windows stored in Stay for the current application.

Restoring Windows Automatically

It’s possible to have Stay restore windows automatically in response to certain events. Specifically, Stay can be configured to restore windows as displays are connected and disconnected and restore windows as applications are launched.