• What determines which monitor an application will pop up inside?

    From Minoru Osaka@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jun 27 13:39:53 2023
    XPost: alt.comp.microsoft.windows

    I have two monitors.

    Most of the time, an application's window pops up where I last left a
    similar window, but enough of the time the application pops up a window in
    the secondary monitor when I KNOW I didn't last leave that application open there.

    The secondary monitor is half the size of the primary so I only put some
    stuff there (certainly not browsers - which still sometimes pop up there).

    What does Windows use to determine WHICH monitor an app will pop its window
    in? Is it purely random? Does it calculate how much room is on the primary?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From VanguardLH@21:1/5 to Minoru Osaka on Tue Jun 27 00:23:52 2023
    XPost: alt.comp.microsoft.windows

    Minoru Osaka <minoru.osaka@asahi.net> wrote:

    I have two monitors.

    Most of the time, an application's window pops up where I last left a
    similar window, but enough of the time the application pops up a
    window in the secondary monitor when I KNOW I didn't last leave that application open there.

    The secondary monitor is half the size of the primary so I only put
    some stuff there (certainly not browsers - which still sometimes pop
    up there).

    What does Windows use to determine WHICH monitor an app will pop its
    window in? Is it purely random? Does it calculate how much room is on
    the primary?

    After loading a program that shows a window:

    - Drag it to the monitor where you want it to default show next time.

    - With the program's window having focus, use Winkey + <arrowkey> to
    move the window to the desired monitor. <arrowkey> is the Left or Right
    arrow key (on the numpad).

    The second method should have the program open in the monitor its window
    was last opened.

    Under system settings (Win + I) -> System -> Display, you should select
    which monitor is the default one. You can switch which monitor is the
    primary one.

    Microsoft did not include any controls to force opening program windows
    on a specific monitor. You have to rely on "last open" to hopefully get
    the program to use the same monitor the next time.

    Your video card's ancilliary software may let you define profiles (often
    for games) that will let you specify on which monitor to show.

    There are 3rd party apps that let you define shortcuts that specify on
    which monitor to focus when opening the program's window. For example:

    https://sourceforge.net/projects/tvgamelauncher/ (free) https://www.displayfusion.com/Download/ (trialware, $34 USD, and up) [*]

    [*] I remember a user asking about this in a forum, and the response was
    to define a trigger which specify which monitor to use. But I've not
    used this software to be sure how you specify monitor affinity.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)