Multi Monitor and Sierra Forgets Window Positions after Wake Up From Sleep

I have a laptop screen and an external monitor. Both are open during my workday. I keep my email and Messages app on my laptop screen and use the 27" monitor as my primary display for everything else. It's basically a multi-monitor setup except my laptop screen is the second monitor.


About once a day, when I leave my Macbook Pro Retina for 30 minutes and it goes to sleep, I wake it up from sleep and all of my windows are moved to my 27" display. I have to drag my email and Messages app back over to the laptop display.


Unless I physically disconnected my monitor, this absolutely never happened in El Capitan or Yosemite and even Mavericks. Every time I work up my Macbook from sleep it would remember where the windows need to be.


Why is this happening with Sierra?

Posted on Nov 1, 2016 2:23 PM

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Posted on Sep 26, 2017 11:13 AM

OK


I had this problem this morning.


First you need to open Mission Control and add a new "Spaces" now just called a "Desktops" to both screens. You don't need to use these new Desktops, they just need to be there. With two monitors you end up with "Desktop 1" and "Desktop 2" on the first monitor and "Desktop 3" and Desktop 4" on the second monitor.


Right click the Dock Icon for that application you want to launch in the second screen and choose Option. Now you can assign the Application to always open on the second Desktop.


Without having multiple Desktops established, this option isn't available. It looks like a bug to me.

33 replies

Nov 7, 2017 2:27 PM in response to plochner

Same issue here.

Mac Book Pro 2017 15inch with Sierra 10.12.6

Dual monitor HP Z27s 4k.

EVERY TIME I unplugged monitors and plug in again at the same ports - all windows are messed up their positions.

This is really really annoying and drives me crazy.

Aug 16, 2017 4:53 AM in response to plochner

Laptop on Left, 34 Widescreen center, 4K Dell 24 Vertical on Right

Same exact setup at work and home.


When I take the 2016 MBP home and plug it in with same cable in same thunderbolt slot, 9 times out of 10 what i left on right monitor is now left. They reverse themselves most of the time.


I have to drag the multiple desktops between the sides.

VERY annoying.


Tim

Aug 30, 2017 1:42 AM in response to plochner

Yup same deal here. macOS 10.12.6, three LG 27UD88-W screens in portrait over USB-C on a 2016 MacPro 15". Lots of Xcode, Safari, terminals open, some in full-screen mode, then a couple of times per day rearrangement ****, mostly when plugging in the screens, but sometimes even when just waking from a sleep with no change to screen connections.


Funny how something small but tedious like this has eventually made me dislike the whole laptop. I'd choose rock-solid multi-monitor support over a touch bar without hesitation.

Sep 26, 2017 11:37 AM in response to laden.m

Yes, I agree, definitely a bug. Just woke up my Sierra system a few minutes ago and same thing happened, everything got pushed over to my primary monitor and I have to take the few minutes and drag stuff back over to the 2nd monitor. I also don't want to use Displays have Separate Spaces option as that effects other things in my system that I don't want.


It doesn't happen all the time, and absolutely never happened in El Cap or Yosemite or Mavericks. In those operating systems I also never had Displays Use Separate Spaces turned on, yet it still worked.


I suspect this is another one of a long list of bugs that Apple will never fix. I'm still waiting for a proper mouse wheel acceleration fix that has been happening since Yosemite.

Dec 7, 2016 8:41 AM in response to plochner

I'm having a similar issue, although in reverse. Mine occurs when locking and unlocking the display or when energy saver turns the display off. The laptop is configured to turn the display off after 15 minutes and"[x] prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off."


I'm using two external 23" monitors over HDMI via two USBC Digital AV Multiport Adapters driven from my 2016 MBP 15".


All the windows on the external displays relocate back to the laptop display when this happens. After the display(s) are back on, I have to painstakingly relocate the windows back to where they were before the display went off--somewhat of a hassle.


There's probably a way to manually save the window locations using some sort of "snapshot" command and restore that, but on my previous 2011 MBP this was not an issue--windows stayed were they were so long as the multiple monitor configuration didn't physically change.

Dec 7, 2016 8:53 AM in response to ACGarland

I have just learned to live with it. Sierra has several buggy things like this which the average user doesn't notice, and I think Sierra so far has been a step down from Yosemite and El Cap. At work I made a big push to get everyone upgraded to El Cap but I won't be making that push for Sierra. Just too many goofy behavior things like this multi monitor issue that sadly I don't think will ever be fixed. I have been to the Genius bar with all of these below problems and have gotten basically a shrug from the guys there - nothing against them, but since they had no idea how to fix these issues even after I replicated it for them, it's obviously something inherit in the OS that nobody knows how to fix.


Here's a short list of some other issues I have:

  • Sierra is confused about active directory passwords and desperately wants your AD password to be the same as your iCloud password. I am asked every morning to "continue to change my iCloud password" so it matches my AD password, something I will never do.
  • Funny enough, any changes to my iCloud preferences pane requires the usual "type your password to continue" - and absolutely none of my passwords work in that box.
  • Mouse scroll wheel acceleration is a disaster with no way to find a happy medium between the scroll speed on your trackpad vs the scroll speed on your mouse wheel. Even with a Mighty Mouse it's not the same.
  • Siri on the Mac in a work environment is massively impractical unless everyone closes their door and has their own office. All of our Sierra users in the office have tried Siri and absolutely none of them use her in their day to day.
  • Window focus switching is goofy. I'll be in Photoshop, open a Finder window to drag a new picture into Photoshop, just to find that Photoshop suddenly jumps to the front as soon as I start dragging the files, obscuring my new Finder window. This happens regularly in several apps both Apple and 3rd party.

Dec 7, 2016 9:28 AM in response to plochner

As far as the Genius bar's handling of my issues, their standard approach is to "Create a new user and let's see if that continues to happen" but that is not practical in an enterprise bound Active Directory environment, because your computer account is tied into your AD account. As soon as you start talking anything enterprise with them, they won't be able to help you much, it's just not their forte and sadly there isn't any other support option. Our Business Store and Joint Venture contacts are helpful and sympathetic, but in the end they're sales guys, not hardcore apple enterprise technical support engineers.


I've always thought that solution was a bit of a cop out because they're basically saying "I don't know what it is so lets start with a fresh set of preference files and see if the problem occurs again" instead of "We've identified the problem and it's with these system files, so let's fix those instead of starting over 100% fresh."

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Multi Monitor and Sierra Forgets Window Positions after Wake Up From Sleep

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