How to save and restore window layouts on Windows 11

Windows 11 got better at window management — but if you've ever rebooted and watched all your apps pile onto the primary monitor, you know the native tools fall short for real workspace restoration. Here's what works and what doesn't.

What Windows 11 offers natively

Microsoft added a few window-management features in Windows 11 that cover the most common cases:

• Snap Layouts — hover the maximize button or press Win+Z, pick a grid (2-up, 3-up, quadrants). Great for arranging the windows you already have open.
• Snap Groups — after you've snapped a set of windows, Windows remembers them as a group. Alt-Tab through groups, click to bring them all forward.
• Per-monitor snap memory — plugging in an external monitor auto-restores where each app previously lived (most of the time).

Where the native tools stop working

If your workflow is more than "three windows side by side," the gaps show up quickly:

1. Reboots don't restore groups. Snap Groups live in memory. Restart the PC and the next morning you're manually opening apps and dragging them into place.
2. No launch automation. Snap arranges windows that are already open. It never launches the app for you.
3. Dock / undock breaks layout. Unplug from a docking station and every window on that external monitor gets squashed onto the primary display, minimized, or clipped off-screen.
4. No per-workspace presets. You can't have a "coding" layout and a "gaming" layout and switch between them with a hotkey.
5. Unreliable across DPI scales. Mix a 4K monitor at 150% and a 1080p at 100% and Snap gets confused about coordinates.

Option 1: Snap Layouts (free, built-in)

Best for: occasional snapping of the windows you already have open.

Press Win+Z on any maximized window, pick a grid tile. Or drag a window to the top of the screen and let go on a layout thumbnail. Good for quick "put these two side by side" cases — not for saving and restoring layouts across sessions.

Option 2: PowerToys FancyZones (free, Microsoft)

Best for: power users who want custom grid layouts.

FancyZones lets you define arbitrary zones (not just the Snap presets) and snap windows into them. But it's still a grid tool, not a workspace manager — it doesn't remember which app goes where, and it doesn't launch apps.

Option 3: DisplayFusion ($29-$75)

Best for: heavy multi-monitor users willing to pay.

Remembers window positions, handles multi-monitor well, has scripting. Downsides: installer is ~50 MB, UI feels 2015-era, and there's no single-hotkey full workspace restore.

Option 4: ScrnFix ($11 Founding Lifetime)

Best for: people who want one hotkey to launch + position their entire setup.

ScrnFix treats a workspace as the unit: open apps + their exact window positions + the target monitor, all saved as a preset. Hit a hotkey and ScrnFix launches whatever's missing, then moves every window into place.

• Under 10 MB, no Electron, Rust backend
• Multiple presets (Coding / Gaming / Streaming) each with their own hotkey
• Handles dock/undock via preset switching
• Works across DPI scales (we map coordinates per-monitor)
• Boots to your preferred layout automatically if you want

Frequently asked questions

Can Windows 11 save window positions by itself?

Partially. Snap Groups remember recent snapped arrangements for the current session and across screen-configuration changes, but not across reboots and not with named presets.

Does Snap Layouts work across multiple monitors?

Yes, per-monitor. But there's no way to save "this specific arrangement on monitors 1 and 2" as a named group you can restore later.

Why do my windows pile up on one monitor after I undock?

Windows treats monitor removal as a hard event and fallback-positions orphaned windows onto the primary display. There's no native "remember and restore" for this. ScrnFix solves it by letting you switch to a laptop-only preset with one hotkey.