It's debatable what the right behavior is here.

If an external display is removed we reflow the display. Now, the internal display "owns" those windows. If you plug the display back in we'd have to undo that reflow. If the user hasn't touched anything that makes some sense.

If the user has interacted with the windows though, it's really unclear whether they'd want to have those windows stay on the current display or move back to the newly connected display.

I can see the frustration.  Getting this right would turn into a rabbit hole REALLY quickly though.

kuscher@ any thoughts?

I believe there was a similar bug filed for this.

Yes, doing this right is complicated. You may plug in different display, which can have different layouts, session restore, how existing auto arrangement should work with this concept (docked, snapped, panel, and resolution change).

I think if we ever do this, then it should be minimum and simple.

How about a hotkey to send a window to the secondary monitor? That would solve the bulk of the problem, which comes from un-maximizing the window, clicking, dragging, re-maximizing.

This is similar to moving windows around during resolution resizing. A technique I've seen work is to remember the window's last user-specified size and placement. If the geometry or layout of the screen changes, then try to first move each window back to its manually placed location. If that puts it out of bounds, then do an automatic move of the window (but remember where the user originally put it).

This way, if a monitor temporarily goes away and returns, windows will move around a bit but return to where the user put them.

I can't see a problem with auto-move to a re-plugged in monitor even if the window was interacted while monitor was un-plugged.

A common workflow for me is:
Work on chromebook while commuting.
Plug in to dual monitors while at work.
Unplug and work while commuting.
Plug in to single monitor while at home.

Both at work and at home, wherever window X was last, it should automatically move back there when the matching monitor is re-connected.

Make this an opt-in feature via settings to avoid confusion.

Is it feasible that an extension be written to achieve this?

 Issue 657419  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 501325  has been merged into this issue.

Hello,

This seems to be stuck on what would be the best approach, would it be possible to start by mimicking what other OS do? (Like how OSX behaves for example).

Common broken user Journey is:
1) User uses a Chromebook docked to a monitor.
2) Un-docks to go attend a meeting
3) Docks again and needs to re-arrange all windows.

To reply to nachum@, it could be done by an extension, as the system.display API exposes monitor data that would allow you to identify each monitor, and detect connection/disconnections. You could then store window positions before and after disconnecting, and switch back.

Regards,

warx@ has already landed some changes in that direction.

Fixed in m66 per issue 740268