microsoft / microsoft/PowerToys

Automatically show windows on one screen on all desktops

Open
#49,526 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Needs-Triage Product-Always On Top Product-FancyZones
Dominant language
C
Stars
139k
Forks
8.6k
PR merge metrics
PR metrics pending

Description

### Description of the new feature / enhancement

In Windows the virtual desktops can only be configured for all screens and not individual screens. This is something that MS needs to change.
But there is a feature "show window on all desktops" which will cause a windows to be present on all desktops.
What I am proposing is to add a feature to Powertoys that will automatically enable "show window on all desktops" for all windows that are on a specific monitor. And when the window gets moved to another monitor disable the setting again.

### Scenario when this would be used?

Assume you have to monitors attached to your Windows PC and you want virtual Desktops only on one of them. So one screen show always show the same windows and the other screen should switch between different desktops.
This would allow to use the windows build-in virtual desktops feature that nativly does not allow to switch desktops only on one screen and "fake" the experience of beeing able to switch desktops only on one screen, by showing the windows on one screen on all desktops.

### Supporting information

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by investigating how Windows virtual desktops expose the “show window on all desktops” setting and how monitor changes can be detected. The proposed behavior is to enable that setting for windows on a selected monitor, disable it when they move elsewhere, and preserve the effect across desktop switches.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
desktop, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.