New windows

Each workspace has two settings for windows that aren’t in a zone. Both are in the New windows menu, below the preview in the editor, and apply only to the selected workspace. The menu’s button reads New windows: followed by the zone that receives them, or Floating.

New windows

Under New windows go to, choose where a window goes when it opens in this workspace, or when you move it here with Move To:

• Floating, the default: the window stays where the app opened it, at its own size. The windows already in zones don’t move.
• A zone: the window joins that zone, and stacks with the apps already there. In the preview, that zone shows a tray icon.

Windows of the workspace’s floating apps never join the New windows zone, whatever you choose. Neither do windows of a program that isn’t an app bundle, such as the Android emulator: they always float.

An app that isn’t configured in any workspace stays here temporarily. When you switch away, its new windows move to General, floating at their last size and position. Returning to this workspace doesn’t bring them back; switching to General does. Minimized windows stay minimized. This also applies when the New windows zone gathered them automatically, or Reapply placed them there.

Opening the app again starts its new window in the workspace you’re using, even if an earlier window with the same title was in General. Calling an existing window from the Dock brings it here too, until you switch away. Going to General or choosing a window in General’s switcher still shows it there.

To keep a window in a workspace, use Move To or Assign to, or add its app to a workspace’s configuration. Wildcard apps keep their own behavior: they go back to the workspace whose layout has them, or wait out of sight in General until called.

Window assignments saved by older Layout versions keep their existing project workspace because those versions didn’t record whether a placement was automatic. Unconfigured apps waiting in General can still be called into the current workspace. The temporary rule survives subsequent Layout relaunches.

When you launch the workspace or use Reapply, floating windows that are already in the workspace also join the New windows zone.

If you remove the zone that receives new windows, the zone that takes its space receives them instead. Choosing a template from Start from sets this menu back to Floating, except for Stacked, which sends new windows to its Stack zone.

When an app opens again

An app that quits and opens again within five minutes, for example to install an update or after a crash, gets its new windows back in the workspaces its windows were in, as long as those windows were all in the same ones. Their titles don’t matter: after an update, Discord may open on another page than the one you left, and it shows a small window first while it starts. If its window was in Communication, both go back there. When the app comes forward while you’re in another workspace, Layout switches there, as when you click the app in the Dock. Otherwise its windows wait there, out of sight.

In other cases, a new window takes the place of one that just closed only when Layout recognizes it: the same project folder in an editor, the same document, or the same title. That covers an app that closes a window and opens it again without quitting, an app whose windows were in different workspaces, and editors and document windows, where a new window may be another project. Any other new window opens in the workspace you’re using.

Moving or assigning one of these windows yourself, or launching its workspace, always wins. Apps configured in no workspace keep the temporary rule above.

Keep floating windows inside the margin

Keep Floating Windows Inside the Margin, at the end of the New windows menu, keeps floating windows inside the outer gap, the spacing along the screen edges:

• A floating window that crosses the margin, for example after you drag it partly off screen, moves back inside it.
• A window too large to fit is made smaller, if the app allows it.
• A small window is never made larger.

Without this option, Layout never moves floating windows. That’s how General works.

The margin is the same size as the spacing, so workspaces with this option follow a change of spacing too. The Stacked and Free templates turn the option on; the other templates turn it off.