I recently bought an external monitor and connect it to my MacBook. The thing is I often bring my laptop to school, so whenever I disconnect it all the notes and icons that I added on my monitor screen keeps going back in a disarranged manner on my laptop. Is there a way to keep these from moving back to my laptop screen?
When you turn off a connected display, your Mac works very hard to be certain every window you left open remains accessible, by moving it to the nearest edge of a nearby working display.
You can not defeat this feature, because doing so would leave windows open but completely unavailable to you.
Adjust your work patterns to clear the display before you power it off.
There is another possiblity. If you wish to, you may be able to use Mission Control, whose Home Screen looks like an iPhone screen.
Mission Control supports creating multiple "Spaces" which can include assigned Apps and Windows. Any "Space" can be swapped into the active display on a whim.
An extension of this concept is called "Displays have Separate spaces". This is where where you can swap any Space onto any display. In that case, your orphaned windows would not be orphans, because they belong to a Space that could be swapped on to the current display and accessed that way.
Work in multiple spaces on Mac - Apple Support
How do I prevent icons and other things I put on my monitor screen from moving back to my laptop once I disconnect it?
