microsoft / microsoft/PowerToys
Automatically show windows on one screen on all desktops
- 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
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