Apps losing position on dual monitors

I am running Yosemite with dual monitors. I can set things up just fine but if I close an application that has been assigned to the second screen when I reopen it it will always reopen on the main screen (on top of the desktop that is active at the time on the main screen) and I have to manually return it to its assigned desktop. This defeats the purpose of the program for me so I am hoping I am doing something wrong and any help is appreciated.

PS. It does the same thing in Mission Control.

Firstly, TotalSpaces2 doesn’t really exercise any control over where apps open - the Apps prefs just tell OSX’s regular preferences which desktops apps are assigned to. So I would expect it to work the same as Mission Control.

However, I would expect apps to remember their desktops when using multiple monitors if you have “Displays have separate spaces” selected in Mission Control prefs. Are you using this setting?

“Displays have separate spaces” is on. (see below)

The primary issue is with Lightroom which insists on opening on the main screen. As I researched this further, I suspect that this is an Adobe problem. That said, other issues have shown themselves which are probably Apple problems with Yosemite but that impact your software.

  1. Turning Dashboard “Off” doesn’t hold. The Dashboard will randomly (seemingly) reappear as a Space. Not a big deal - just an irritant.

  2. “Displays have separate spaces” does NOT hold as ON when I turn the computer off. When I turn the computer back on, all of the spaces are on the main monitor and Apple has graciously provided me with six extra blank spaces. They are showing up as a grid rather than as a line so I assume TotalSpaces is active and reading them from somewhere. Turning “Displays have separate spaces” back on remedies the problem and gets rid of the extra spaces but it is a PIA to have to do this every time after I shut the system down. Does not seem to occur on a “Restart”.

Thanks, Henry

Hi,

You may want to check this post Loosing layout after restart (Yosemite) - it might help.

If your system settings aren’t staying the way they are set, there is something awry with OSX. TotalSpaces doesn’t exert any influence over those. I really can’t think what would cause this issue.

Been playing around for a few days and just when I think everything is fine - something weird happens. At this point I am convinced that Yosemite is very wonky in terms of where it puts things when in a multi-screen setting. Sometimes things work and some times they don’t. There is probably a pattern though at this point I haven’t figured it out. About 30% of the time if the system goes to sleep it will awaken to the dock being locked on the wrong screen with no way to move it back unless one does a restart. After the restart, Lightroom is likely (but not consistently) to open where I want it (secondary screen) but after I shut down it always opens on the primary screen even though it has been assigned to the secondary.

Given some of the stupidness that they purposely programmed into Mac Mail (try a sort by name), I suspect they will consider this random behavior to be a new “feature” as well.

If the dock is locked on a particular screen, that sounds really like the system is in a strange state.

To save doing a restart, you may be able to recover this by restarting the Dock program. At a terminal you can type “killall Dock”, or alternatively quitting and restarting TotalSpaces2 would also cause the Dock to restart if that’s easier.