v1.2.0 Windows Free and open source

Reboot or sign in. Your desktop arranges itself.

Every reboot, the same ritual: start the same applications, drag each window to the same display, maximise it, repeat. ScreenState does it for you. Capture your desktop once as a profile; from then on, signing in starts what was running and puts every window back on the display it belongs on.

Download for Windows View the source

How it works

Capture once. Restored after every reboot or sign-in.

Capture. Arrange your desktop the way you like it and capture it. ScreenState lists every application with a window on screen and how many windows it has, recording where each one sits; untick anything you want left out, name the profile and save. An application running with no window shown is not offered: it has nothing to arrange. Nothing is written until you confirm.
Mark a default. The default profile is the one applied after you sign in. With only one profile, it is the default.
Sign in. ScreenState waits in the notification area, starts whatever the profile says should be running and places each window the moment it appears, without waiting for the slowest application. A message on every display says the desktop is being prepared, then that it is ready. Opening the manager takes that message down at once. Only a sign-in arranges the desktop by itself: starting ScreenState by hand opens the manager and moves nothing. Apply arranges a profile whenever you ask.
Read what happened. If anything could not be done, the splash says how many applications did not start and the report, in the tray menu, names each one with the reason.

The feature list

It puts the desktop back. Carefully.

What it does

Knows your displays apart, even two of the same model, by the identity Windows gives each screen rather than a number that changes. It tells you which one it means by where it sits: the top, left, centre or right display, with the exact identity a hover away.
Names applications by what survives their updates. A packaged application whose path moves with every update keeps its model id beside the path, so it is still started and its window still placed without capturing the profile again.
Puts windows back in front of one another as they were. A capture records which of the profile's windows is in front of which; a restore sets that order once, as its last step, without taking the front from anything.
Leaves your keyboard alone. Nothing it places or starts takes the keyboard from the window you are typing in; a window it maximises does so without taking the front.
Leaves the taskbar clean. No button left lit, red or missing its icon once the restore is done.
Puts away what the profile does not name, by minimising it. At sign-in it can close those windows instead, if you turn that on. It then waits only for the windows it asked to close, so one that opens afterwards cannot hold the restore up; any that will not close is minimised.
Copes with change. A display that is gone sends its windows to the primary one; displays changing mid-restore do not stop it; a window that moves itself is put back once.
Applies any profile on demand from the tray or the manager, with a bar showing how far it has got. In the manager a button stops it, leaving what is already placed where it is.
Tells you when something is left over. While the last restore has an application it could not start or place, the tray icon carries a red badge and its tooltip says how many.
Waits as long as you choose. A restore stops waiting for windows that have not appeared after a ceiling you set in Settings, from 1 to 60 minutes; 15 until you change it.
Keeps everything on one screen. The manager shows your profiles on the left, the selected profile's applications in the middle and its buttons down the right, with Settings behind the gear at the top. Each application is listed by name, with how its window is shown, on which display and at what size beneath; the full path it recorded is a hover away. A profile file it cannot read is named under the profile list and left exactly as it is.

What it does not do

End another program. The only process it ever ends is its own agent, which setup stops, when you tell it to, before replacing or removing it. It closes a window only where you have turned that on, only at sign-in and only for a window the profile being restored does not name.
Restore what is inside an application. Browser tabs, open documents and folders are the application's business.
Snap groups or virtual desktops. Neither is recorded.
Keep the windows in order afterwards. An application that brings its own window forward once the restore is done is not fought; a key press or click during a restore leaves the order as it came up.
Encrypt your profiles. They are plain files in your own folder, holding application paths, window positions, which window is in front of which, display identities and profile names.
Send your desktop anywhere. The one connection it makes asks whether a newer version exists, carries nothing about you and can be turned off. Window titles, which can say what you are working on, are never written to its log.
Ask for administrator rights. Installed and run for your account alone.
Anything but Windows. Built and tested on Windows 11. Windows 10 will very likely work but is untested.

How it is built

Measured, not guessed.

The behaviours above were measured on a real four-display desktop; the specification records those measurements beside the requirements they settled. Nothing on this page is a number made up for it.

103

Requirements in the specification: 77 the product cannot do without and 26 more it carries.

100%

Of the functions that decide what a profile means and what a restore does are covered by tests. The build refuses to run below it.

Structural tests that fail the build if the architecture is broken or a rule is undone: nothing may end a program, nothing may start in front.

Timers a restore ever waits on: the ceiling you set to bound a restore nobody touches and the wait for a taskbar button to stop flashing. Everything else is an event Windows reports.

Install

One file. No administrator rights.

Download ScreenStateSetup.exe from the latest release.
Run it and choose Install. It installs for your account only, so Windows never asks for administrator rights. The same program updates, repairs and uninstalls.
Capture your desktop from the manager, save the profile and sign out and in again to watch it come back.

To remove it, uninstall from Settings > Apps. Your profiles live apart from the program, so they stay unless you tick the box that removes them too.

Supporting ScreenState

Free. It stays free.

There is no paid tier, no licence key and no feature held back behind a donation. If ScreenState has saved you the morning drag-and-maximise, a contribution supports its maintenance. The same link sits at the foot of the manager's button rail.

Donate