Windows specific: Restores window positions for use when your windows rearrange on their own (post windows unlock) in multiple monitor / laptop usage scenarios.
Running windows 10. I'm constantly locking my machine for brief periods. If it stays locked for more than about a minute, something rearranges my window positions. This happens only when my laptop is docked at certain docks (home doesn't cause this; work does). So, at work, after each unlock, I have to manually undo the arrangement that the OS did (moves every window). I searched for way too long trying to find an answer to this problem; nobody had any solution (actually, some folks found super-strange or complex solutions, but nothing worked consistently). A coworker suggested I make use of some of his olde fashioned win32 window management code to put something together, so I did. It's not perfect, but for me it works about 95% of the way (every once in awhile a window is not restored where it was during persist).
- WindowsPositionPersisterLibrary: Native Win32 (still relevant) stuff along with the manager that does persistence / re-application of windows.
- WindowPositionPersisterConsole: The entry point for invoking manually.
- WindowPositionPersisterMain: A WinForms (old, but intended to be invisible anyway) application that I tested, but couldn't get working correctly (see comment "This is the reason this can't run as a windows service" for starters). Won't work running as windows service, and couldn't get the OS lock/unlock event hooks to work properly either.
- When invoked passing "persist", it caches (to a temp file) all window positions. When invoked passing "restore", it restores them. It would be a beautiful thing if the caching could take place automatically at session lock/unlock instead of having to be invoked manually, but I couldn't get that to work (see WindowPositionPersisterMain above).
- I created powershell functions that I use to invoke these (before locking desktop and after) since I always have a powershell window open, but you could use a desktop shortcut or batch file.