Developer workspace setup that survives every reboot

Every morning the same dance: boot the PC, open VSCode, resize it to the left monitor, open a terminal, drag it to the right, open Chrome, pin the tab group, open Slack, minimize it, open Notion, open the database. Three minutes wasted before the first commit. Here's how to make it one hotkey.

The dev rig that shows up in every Twitter "desk setup" post

• Left monitor — VSCode (or JetBrains) fullscreen
• Center monitor — browser (docs, Stack Overflow, staging env)
• Right monitor — terminal (Windows Terminal / WezTerm / Alacritty) + Slack minimized + Notion

Windows 11 doesn't restore this layout after reboot. Even Snap Groups forget which app goes where. So we automate.

What "automation" actually needs to do

1. Launch missing apps. VSCode isn't running? Start it. Terminal closed? Open it. Chrome not open? Spawn with the right profile.
2. Wait for windows to exist. No point repositioning a window that hasn't been created yet.
3. Match launched windows to saved positions. Two Chrome windows? Put the first on the center monitor, the second on the right. Match by window title, exe, and class.
4. Move every window to its saved monitor + position. Respect DPI scale.
5. Handle edge cases. App already open on a different monitor. App has a splash screen. App was minimized.

Doing it by hand (AutoHotkey / PowerShell)

You can script this with AutoHotkey — Run "VSCode", WinWait, WinMove — or PowerShell calling Start-Process and [Win32].SetWindowPos(). Estimate: 4-8 hours to write and debug for one machine. More time when a window title changes, an exe moves, DPI shifts between monitors. This is exactly why we built ScrnFix — the tool we wanted instead of maintaining 300 lines of AHK.

Doing it with ScrnFix

1. Open ScrnFix, click Save preset. It snapshots every visible window: exe, class, title, size, monitor.
2. Go to Preset Settings, add the launch targets for each app (VSCode, Terminal, Chrome, Slack).
3. Assign a global hotkey (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+1).
4. Optional: toggle Launch on boot so Windows startup applies this preset.

That's it. Press Ctrl+Alt+1 from anywhere and ScrnFix launches everything that's missing, waits for windows to appear, then moves each into its saved position.

Multiple workspaces, one keyboard

Developers switch contexts more than designers switch Photoshop layers. Assign a preset per context:

• Ctrl+Alt+1 — Coding (VSCode + terminal + Chrome/staging)
• Ctrl+Alt+2 — Review (GitHub on center, IDE on left, terminal right)
• Ctrl+Alt+3 — Debug (logs terminal left, IDE center, browser DevTools right)
• Ctrl+Alt+4 — Meeting (Zoom/Meet fullscreen, Notion for notes on side)

One hotkey = full context switch in under a second.