Monterey seems to not remember which display should show which windows after sleep wakeup

Yes I tried this initially it looked to work, but after testing a few days I can conclude it is a hit and miss mess. Some windows stay some windows stay sometimes some don't at all. Looked promising, glimmer of hope, but Apple will have to fix this drama. I am still warmed to see how the Apple community is trying help each other and trying to come up with a solution.

Every time an upgrade is out I have my fingers crossed hoping this issue is in the past. Now, I see Apple announcing Stage Manager to be released with Ventura, and I wonder if the problem will be fixed or the bug will persist along with a fancy feature.

I think I know why Monterey does not position windows on the correct display after sleep.

Many others have reported the bug in Monterey that causes windows to   be displayed on only one display after sleep. The below example is not specific to any particular brand of display.

I have 3 Eizo  4K EV3285 displays on a Mac Studio M1 Max running Monterey 12.4.

I believe the core problem is that the OS does not allow enough time to check for available displays, rather than “forgetting” the window-positions on the various displays. My experiment shows that Monterey does remember the window positions, however it only detects one of the displays.

I verified this by disabling  the  setting “Power Saving” on each display, this an internal setting made on the physical display, not on the Mac. The setting causes the Eizo display to go to sleep until an incoming signal is detected on the specified active input port.

On wakeup with Power Saving ON, all the windows end up on the same display, because the OS does not allow enough time for all displays to wake up. 

On wakeup with Power Saving OFF the windows all appear in the correct  pre-sleep  positions on all displays, because all displays react immediately to the incoming signal from the Mac.

This works both when the Mac is put to sleep and with the Mac setting Active Screen Corners “Put display to sleep” 

It also works from a cold start, provided the displays are still running with “power Saving” OFF.

However, it is still a bug that should be fixed.

After weeks of experimenting I finally figured out how to stop my macbook pro M1 (2021) from moving all the windows on the external displays to the one particular external display that is the “main” display when restoring from Sleep. All I had to do was “check” the box for “Displays have Separate Spaces.” This is a setting under “Mission Control”(System Preferences)(Note: the other three checkboxes are all unchecked).

I cannot believe that is all I had to do. When I first got my macbook a couple of months ago the check box was checked by default but I unchecked it so that when I used the three finger gesture to switch between spaces/desktops on one of the screens it would now apply to both screens. Little did I know that there is an OS bug (external display window consolidation bug), which is likely a regression in Monterey.

The bug was tricky to reproduce initially but I finally figured out how to reproduce it consistently 100% of the time. The way to do that is to use the Apple menu item for “sleep” because when I use the wireless keyboard’s power button and held it down for 1.5+ sec it would not actually sleep because my apple keyboard has the touch ID which disables the sleep trigger and merely shuts off the display/locks my computer. I’m guessing at some point between 10-30min after hitting keyboard power button it would actually enter “sleep” mode (not sure what sleep level the problem arises in. It was that time window which made the bug seem random before I figured it out.

I hope this helps others.

Hi joejones81,

I just tried your approach to:

(a) “check” the box for “Displays have Separate Spaces.”

(b) the other three checkboxes are all unchecked

I initially tested with screen off for 5 mins, it seems to restore the app locations okay. But after I left my mac overnight in sleep mode again, the locations were off when I turn it back on in the morning.

So it seems the problem still exist.

I’m pretty sure when you check the box it indicates you have to logout to have it take affect. I did a full shut down and started it back up and have not had the problem since. I even brought it to work today and it remembered the placement on my work computers.

After check the box and logout, test whether the apps will stay in place after leaving it sleeping overnight, the result is...

No, it still goes into random after wakeup. (MacOS 12.4 latest version).

This bug just never goes away...

This is how I solved it. Your mileage may vary.

I have two identical LG monitors and a 2021 M1 Macbook Pro runing Monterey 12.4.

Initially both monitors were connected by thunderbolt<->DisplayPort cables. No matter what I tried when I restarted or came back from sleep, which monitor would be my main would be randomly chosen.

Once i changed one of the monitor cables to thunderbolt<->USB-C my mac seems to be able to distinguish them apart and could successfully retain my monitor arrangement.

This is an incredibly annoying bug Apple. One that I had to spend money on to fix.

-josh

I was able to solve this issue, on my computer at least. Mac Studio running 4 external displays. 3 of them USB-c and one HDMI.

SOLUTION:

I changed the power saver settings to make sure that the computer itself went to sleep BEFORE my monitors went to sleep. When the computer itself goes to sleep and blacks out the screens, it saves the current window arrangement on all monitors and desktops.

The issue was that my monitors were turning off / sleeping first and the computer lost the monitor output, and therefore pushed all the windows back to the main monitor.

Let me know if this is the case for anyone else and if this helped.

I have this problem now too. I'm using the CalDigit dock to connect two ViewSonic monitors to my M1 MBP.

It was fine for months and then after disconnecting everything and moving (to a new State), ever since I connected everything back up it has this problem/bug.

I've tried rearranging the cables, etc. but still having the same issue. Sometimes it works to hit `Esc` instead of logging in after waking from sleep, that will rearrange the displays again so that they're back to "normal".

This is quite annoying since one of my monitors is setup vertically/turned on the side and it's difficult to crane my neck likewise to try and get things back properly using the display settings.

I also have this issue, and I suspect the same diagnosis that "Problem Solved Now" has offered, ie. the system doesn't wait long enough for the monitors to wake, and rearranges window positions to fit on what it thinks is your full desktop, too early.

I am on a Mac Studio M1, Dell UP2715K (via OWC adaptor to twin DP) and a 30" Cinema Display (using Club Dual Link DVI adaptor). On Monterey 12.4. The issue is repeatable every time for long sleeps (eg. overnight). It's driving me nuts!

Did you try changing your Mac Studio sleep settings to be shorter than the monitor sleep settings? I set my Mac studio to sleep after 15 minutes (my monitors sleep after 20) and as long as the computer itself goes to sleep before the monitors, that has fixed the issue for me 100% of the time. Even after the computer sleeping overnight.

It seemed that when the monitors went to sleep first, the computer saw the display disappear so it moved the windows from that display to the main screen. Then when I would wake up the computer, everything would be on the main screen since the monitors slept first.

Thanks for the suggestion, and your explanation makes sense, however I usually put my computer to sleep via the apple menu at night, not a timeout. Everything sleeps together (or thereabouts).

I don't see separate timings for computer sleep and display sleep under Energy Saver. Is the computer sleep timeout a separate "defaults" setting perhaps?

AH I guess it's not really putting the computer to sleep. I should have been more clear. It's the setting under SYSTEM PREFERENCES > ENERGY SAVER. I set it to turn off the screens after 15 minutes.

Okay, I'll give it a go.

I also found another suggestion: under General Uncheck "Close windows when quitting an app". Bizarre if it works. Reference: an answer on macrumors.

If either work I'll let you know — probably tomorrow.