Recovering windows

When you switch workspaces, Layout moves the windows of the other workspaces to the bottom-right corner of the screen. Before it moves a window there, it writes the window’s identity and position to a recovery journal on your disk. That’s how it can always put windows back, even if something goes wrong in the middle of a switch or Layout quits unexpectedly. When a hidden window closes, or its app quits, its entry leaves the journal: there’s nothing left to bring back.

Recover all hidden windows

These bring back every window in the recovery journal:

• Recover Hidden Windows, in the Layout menu bar icon’s menu. It also works while Layout is paused.
• Recover hidden windows in the command palette, or ⌃⌥⇧R.

Each window goes back to the position it had before Layout hid it, and keeps its workspaces: the next switch puts the other workspaces’ windows away again. A window you had minimized yourself stays minimized: Layout restores its position without un-minimizing it. If an app hidden with ⌘H has a window waiting in the corner, Layout shows the app again first.

When everything is back, Layout shows “Recovery complete. No windows remain hidden by Layout.”

Bring back one window

To bring back a single window, use Bring Back on Screen in its … menu, under Open windows in the editor, or press ⌃⌥R for the window you used last in the active workspace. The Layout bar offers Bring Recent Window on Screen when you right-click an app’s icon.

Layout un-minimizes the window if needed and moves it back into view, at its position in that workspace. See Moving windows.

When you pause or quit

Pausing Layout puts back every window it moved out of sight. Each window keeps its workspace: when you resume Layout, the windows of the other workspaces go back out of sight, as after a switch.

Quitting does the same: Layout spends at most five seconds restoring windows, then quits anyway so it never blocks you. Windows it couldn’t restore in time stay in the journal, and Layout restores them the next time it starts.

Only a pause you ask for is remembered. After Pause Layout, the next launch stays paused and opens the editor. After a quit, Layout starts again active, where it was, unless workspaces launch at login: it then launches them and ends in the default one.

After a crash

If Layout stops unexpectedly, the journal is still on disk. When you open Layout again, it picks up where it was: it brings back the windows in the journal before anything else, then each window goes back to its workspace, and you’re back in the workspace you were in, or in the default one when workspaces launch at login. Windows Layout can’t place start in General. If you had paused Layout, it stays paused: Resume Layout or Recover Hidden Windows brings back what’s left in the journal.

While Layout keeps running, it recognizes each window in the journal directly. After Layout restarts, it has to find them again, by the number macOS gives each window, which stays the same as long as its app runs. If that number is missing, Layout looks for a window of the same app with the same title, and moves it back only if exactly one matches. If the app has quit since, its window no longer exists, and Layout drops that entry.

When several windows could match, for example two windows of one app with the same title, Layout doesn’t guess. It keeps the entry in the journal and reports that the window “could not be reliably identified”. If some windows are still in the journal after activation, Layout says how many, and you can try again with Recover Hidden Windows.

If a window still seems lost

1. Check the other workspaces. The window may belong to another workspace: open the Layout Overview with ⌃⌥O to see every workspace’s windows, or search for its title in the command palette to focus it.
2. A wildcard app’s window that no layout has may be waiting in General, where the Overview, Open windows and a switch to General don’t show it. Call the app, or pick it in ⌃⌥., and it comes to you. See Wildcard apps.
3. Use Recover Hidden Windows, or ⌃⌥⇧R, to bring back everything in the journal.
4. In the editor, unfold Open windows, find the window, and choose Bring Back on Screen from its … menu.
5. Check that the window isn’t minimized in the Dock, or that its app isn’t hidden with ⌘H. Clicking the app in the Dock brings it forward.
6. If the window is in macOS full screen, Layout doesn’t manage it. Reach it the way you usually reach full-screen windows, for example with Mission Control.
7. Pause Layout. Pausing restores every window in the journal.

If none of this helps, send diagnostics before quitting Layout.

If the Accessibility permission was turned off

Without the permission, Layout can’t move windows, so it can’t bring them back either. It pauses and shows “Accessibility permission was revoked. Allow Layout again to restore hidden windows.” Turn the permission back on, then activate Layout or use Recover Hidden Windows. See Accessibility permission.