How to save and restore window layouts on a Mac
You spend ten minutes arranging things properly. Editor left, terminal bottom-right, browser on the second display, Slack tucked in a corner. Then you unplug the monitor to go to a meeting, come back, plug it in — and everything is piled onto the laptop screen at the wrong size. If you've been looking for a way to save a window layout on Mac, this is almost always the reason. Here's what macOS remembers on its own, what it doesn't, and the two very different ways to fix it.
What macOS actually remembers
More than people assume, but never the thing you want.
- Individual apps remember their own windows. macOS Resume brings documents and window positions back when you relaunch an app. Whether it does depends on a single checkbox: System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Windows & Apps → Close windows when quitting an application. Turn it off and apps reopen roughly where you left them. Turn it on and every launch is a fresh start.
- Restarts can restore everything. The "Reopen windows when logging back in" checkbox on the shutdown/restart dialog does what it says.
- Display arrangement sticks. Your monitor positions in System Settings → Displays persist per configuration.
What macOS has never had is a named, saveable layout. There is no "save this arrangement as Docked" anywhere in the system, and nothing that re-applies an arrangement when a display appears. That gap is the entire reason a small category of apps exists.
One related setting worth knowing: Displays have separate Spaces (System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Mission Control). Leaving it on means each display gets its own full-screen Spaces — and it's a common culprit when windows vanish rather than merely move after you reconnect a monitor. Toggling it requires a log-out to take effect.
Two ways to solve it, and they're genuinely different
Almost every recommendation you'll find is a snapshot tool: capture where everything is, name it, restore it later. That's one answer. The other is to make re-placing a window so fast that restoring a saved snapshot stops being worth the setup.
Which fits you depends on one question: do you rebuild the same exact arrangement over and over, or does your layout change with whatever you're working on? Fixed rituals — the same four apps, same two monitors, every morning — reward snapshots. A day that drifts between tasks does not; you'd spend more time curating layouts than using them.
Apps that save window layouts on Mac
| Tool | Price | Auto-restores on display change | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stay | Free | Yes | Stores a window set per display combination. Now freeware, still maintained; needs macOS 14.6+. The default pick. |
| Display Maid | $5.99 (App Store) | Yes | Long-running, simple, profile-based. |
| MacLayout | $19.99 one-time (1 yr updates) | Yes | Named layouts, shortcuts, Spaces-aware. 14-day trial, 3 layouts. |
| Moom | $9.99 one-time | Manual/triggered | Snapshots plus a drag-grid tiler. Two tools in one. |
| Rectangle Pro | $9.99 one-time | Yes (App Layouts) | Layout triggers on display connect/disconnect; users report conflicts with multi-display rules. |
| BetterTouchTool | $15 / $25 lifetime | Via custom automation | Enormously capable, but you're building it yourself. |
| Let's Tile | Free tier, $9.99 Pro | No — by design | Doesn't save layouts. Re-places any window in a couple of keystrokes instead. |
If you want the snapshot approach, start with Stay. It's free, it's been doing this for over a decade, and its per-display-combination model matches the actual problem: you don't have one layout, you have a docked layout and an undocked layout. Set it up once and reconnecting a monitor puts things back on its own.
The other approach: re-place, don't restore
Snapshot tools have a maintenance cost nobody mentions up front. Every new app, every window you open that isn't in the saved set, every time you change your mind about where Slack lives — you re-save. And a restored layout is only correct if the windows you saved are the windows you have open.
The alternative is to stop treating placement as something worth preserving. If putting a window exactly where you want takes under a second, an "unrestored" layout is a non-event: you glance at the mess, fire four shortcuts, and you're back.
That's the bet Let's Tile makes. One shortcut — ⌘ ↵ — drops a
visible grid over the window you're using. Steer with the arrow keys,
press return, done. There's no per-layout shortcut to memorise, because
there's only the one. The free tier's 3 × 2 grid covers halves, thirds,
two-thirds, quarters and full screen; Pro ($9.99, one-time, no account,
up to 20 devices per key) adds grids you define yourself, ⌘⇧ + arrows
to throw a window to another display mid-placement, and — the part that
matters here — a preferred grid per display, remembered automatically.
The ultrawide keeps its six columns, the laptop screen keeps its two.
Be clear about what that is and isn't: Let's Tile is a placer, not a snapshot restorer. It will not put your eight windows back where they were. It makes putting them somewhere good fast enough that you may not care. If you truly need byte-exact restoration after every dock cycle, use Stay — and there's nothing stopping you running both.
The companion problem is finding the window once your desktop is a
pile. That's what Let's Switch is for: ⌥ ⇥ flips through
your most recently used windows with live previews, so you're not
Cmd-Tabbing to an app and hunting from there. Placement and navigation
are separate jobs, and most people only ever fix one of them.
Frequently asked questions
Does macOS have a built-in way to save window layouts? No. It restores individual apps' windows via Resume, and it remembers your display arrangement, but there's no way to name and re-apply an arrangement of windows.
Why do my windows move when I disconnect a monitor? Windows on a display that no longer exists have to go somewhere, so macOS pulls them onto a remaining screen and often resizes them to fit. Reconnecting doesn't undo it. Only a tool that stored the previous positions can put them back.
Will a saved layout survive a macOS update? Usually, since layouts are stored by the app, not the system — but resolution or scaling changes can shift things. Re-save after any display change you intend to keep.
Do I need one of these if I only use a laptop screen? Rarely. Single-display setups don't suffer the undock scramble. What you probably want instead is faster placement — see our guide to tiling windows on macOS or the multi-monitor setup piece if a second screen is on the horizon.
More on working this way in the Let's Suite blog.