Reopen Windows When Logging Back In?

Question

Reopen Windows When Logging Back In?

This seems like a nice feature to add to Lion. When you shutdown or restart, the dialog box asks if you'd like to "Reopen Windows When Logging Back In?"

If you use the new Mission Control and have multiple desktops going, the computer will indeed restart and open the windows that were open. However, it will not open then in the correct spaces.

So if you have one space on which you work, another space in which you have social media, and third space in wich youplay music, THEY ALL OPEN on the first desktop when you restart. This then causes you to have to spend time re-arranging the spaces again.

Seems a bit counter-intuitive if you ask me.

Mac Pro (2009), iPad Wifi, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 25, 2011 5:39 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

GlennW

Level 3

630 points

Jul 25, 2011 5:47 PM in response to Andrew Mcvinnie

Lots of apps didn't play nicely with Spaces in Snow Leopard, and unfortunately many of them still do not play nice with Mission Control in Lion. That said, if you deselect the "Automatically rearrange spaces" checkbox in the Mission Control system preferences pane (and if you're a Spaces user you almost undoubtedly want to do this), IIRC at least the well-behaved apps will end up in the right spaces on restart. I don't want to restart my system right now to verify this since I have too many windows open 🙂

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Answer 2

Jul 25, 2011 5:59 PM in response to GlennW

Well, I tried what you said and it didn't really help. Good idea though.

The only Apps that open on the correct desktops are the ones that I assigned to those desktops.

However, based on the idea of this "Reopen windows" option, you would think it would reopen them where they were, not in the default desktop.

For example, I have one space that I leave Twitter and Google+ (in Safari) open on. I have a second Safari window open in my defalt space. When I restart and Lion asks "Reopen windows?" It should take the 0.00002 seconds to note WHERE they are open. Then reopen the Twitter and G+ Safari window on desktop 2, and the other Safari window on desktop 1.

#justsaying

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Answer 3

GlennW

Level 3

630 points

Jul 25, 2011 6:08 PM in response to Andrew Mcvinnie

Yes, that's right, I should have been clearer. And while I agree that the level of intelligence you describe shoud be available, at least as an option, I can sort of understand how it ended up the way it did in the first release. So for now, at least, if you want your Desktops organized the way your Spaces were in Snow Leopard, you have to be explicit about it. But then, you had to be explicit about it in Snow Leopard, and Snow Leopard didn't have the restore-on-startup option, so this isn't a regression - just not as much of an advance as we've come to expect from Apple.

File an enhancement request with Apple to get the behavior you want in a future release. I'm sure you won't be the only one to do so, or to be happy if Apple does it.

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Answer 4

meagain1

Level 1

24 points

Jan 19, 2012 7:29 AM in response to GlennW

Everytime I need to reboot, I need to take 10 minutes+ to rearrange Safari windows in their old Desktops.

Is there really STILL no way around this? There has to be some way to get Lion to reopen Safari windows in the desktops they were in vs. all in Desktop 1?

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