Tested it. Set up my three monitors again, 4 spaces each (one is the laptop screen). I made a backup of the config with DisplaySpacesManager. Turned the laptop off, restarted it without monitors and had 11 spaces left (so one less). Then I reconnected the monitors; Laptop screen had 1 space, one monitor (the ‘main’ one with the menubar) had 8 spaces and the last one had four. So weirdly enough, now I had 1 more than the original 12.
Then I ran DisplaySpacesManager again to try and restore what I started out with. That didn’t work out. If I read the log correctly, 4 spaces were moved and 2 moves failed. I think one of the issues must be that MacOS actually deletes spaces that later can’t be recognized by your tool.
What I feel I need here is the correct number of spaces per screen and the correct app assignments to the right space. If this can’t be done, I do understand. If it can but you need me to test specifics… tell me what to test 
Slightly OT - I’ve just made a feature request that I think could be relevant to the issues you all are dealing with:
Today, I had the same thing happen again. The laptop only showed 10 spaces out of the original 12. I’m quite sure MacOS is happy deleting spaces. I also understand that totalspaces cannot move spaces that are not there anymore. So the problem is spaces moving and disappearing.
Having said all that, I think ggrocca’s feature request makes a lot of sense. That would actually be the ideal solution I think.
Any chance of this little utility being updated to allow removal of old configurations.
Still having spaces getting mangled between random reboots and even this app sometimes doesn’t properly restore… Hence I have to regularly reset it up and save the config again. It does work some times so is usefull… But would be good to get rid of the long list of old configs that appear broken.
Cheers.
Yes, I intend to do that. You can delete them manually from ~/.ts2_spaces_configs using a text editor, but this is a bit annoying to do.
For anyone still following this thread, I have made a much better new version of DisplaySpacesManager that is able to add and delete spaces. It attempts to restore the configuration you saved, including app bindings and desktop backgrounds.
I have been using it ok for a few days, I think it’s ready to be tested externally.
http://downloads.binaryage.com/DisplaySpacesManager-1.1.0.zip
It will only work with this pre-release version of TotalSpaces2, which needs to be installed first:
http://downloads.binaryage.com/TotalSpaces2-2.2.18.dmg
Any previously stored configurations from earlier versions won’t work as the save format is different.
Tested with Yosemite only. And reminder: you need to have a license for TotalSpaces2 for this to work at all (trial version won’t work).
This is happening to me, I love this software and just purchased it. But I spent a ton of time setting everything up only to loose all that work on a reboot. This seems to be long time running issue, is there no fix in site?
@khofmeyer yes I am trying to help those that work with multiple monitors, and I have made the tool above that helps to save and restore spaces configurations. If you are able to try it, I would appreciate any feedback.
Excellent. I have downloaded and saved a configuration. I will see how it works on my next reboot. Will I have to manually restore or will TotalSpaces2 read form this?
Also, feature suggestions - allow an “update” to a configuration.
Thanks!
On another note, I would say that desktops only “sync grids” about 50% of the time. I will change to an app that is on another space and only the active desktop will switch.
Hi Stephen,
It’s been a while, but I am still using TotalSpaces2 :). What I’m noticing is that TS seems to think I need a certain number of desktops (remember, I use 3 monitors with 4 desktops each) and that sometimes changes. in some cases TS tells me I should have for example 5 desktops when I have and want 4. It’s odd, but unfortunately I’m starting to get used to the situation. I just downloaded your new tools and the pre-release to see how that works out. Thanks for keeping up the good work!
@khofmeyer
You have to click restore whenever you want to revert to a saved config.
I wasn’t aware of a problem with syncing, thanks.
@jrobijns TS only really knows about columns. It looks at the number of rows you have, or the number of rows you have set using the Rows + and - buttons, and fills out the columns to match.
Is it not possible to just have TotalSpaces read from a “default” save and restore itself instead of making the user do it?
It may be possible to wire this kind of function into TotalSpaces2 in the future.
Hi Stephen, I second Khofmeyer’s request. Right now, the Displayspacesmanager works brilliantly. It seems to be able to restore the configuration I want every time. The only caveat is that it remembers which monitors are connected, so when I’m at a customer’s site I may have a messed up number of desktops, simply because Displayspaces manager can’t recognize the monitors and thus cannot restore a config. I now made 2 configs, one for home and one for work. I realize that making it possible to restore whatever monitors I have attached is difficult. What I’d like is for Displayspacesmanager to ‘see’ how many monitors I have and then restore accordingly. What I mean is:
- DSM sees I have 3 monitors with 4 spaces
- I reconnect to completely different monitors, yet they are again 3 monitors in total
- DSM looks at the layout (which monitor is in which position from left to right
- DSM restores 4 spaces to each, according to layout, not monitor ID’s
But I’d be totally happy if Totalspaces can automatically detect a certain number of configs and according to those, restore the spaces I want. That is SO much better than the detailt Mac OS behavior (I have no idea why it works so weirdly).
Good to hear the manager tool works ok in real use, thanks for that feedback.
Automatically figuring out which display to put which spaces on is probably possible - a bit more work to record the positions of the monitors, and to compare them.
Hi Stephen, it’s looking good. I basically have 3 profiles set up in DisplaySpacesManager:
- Just my laptop (so 1 monitor)
- 3 monitors at home
- 3 monitors at work
Since the monitors at work are different from the ones at home (2 external ones at both locations) I have a different profile setup.
What would be ideal:
-
When I’m not connected to any external monitors, I get my 12 spaces (so add or delete respectively). Right now I don’t think I ever get more than 12, so I’d assume adding 1 (for some reason it’s mostly 11 I end up with) would be perfect. I actually don’t care if this is too much work because I never use that many spaces on just my laptop screen.
-
Whenever I connect 1 extra monitor: automatically move 4 spaces to that external monitor and keep 8 on my laptop.
-
Whenever I connect a 2nd extra monitor: automatically move 4 spaces from my laptop screen to the extra monitor.
I actually don’t care so much which spaces go where. I’m not even sure it matters. In whatever order I manually add spaces (or let DisplaySpaces do it), the applications I set up to use a certain space always end up in the right place it seems.
I just always want all spaces on my laptop, unless I have extra monitors. Then I want 4 spaces per external monitor and the remainder on my laptop.
Can this be done? Can you do it? Will you? I’m willing to pay more for the tool, but I’m hoping I would not be the only one financing this feature 
That sounds more or less how OS X is supposed to work in the first place (except that for some people it doesn’t).
Anyway it sounds like the DisplaySpacesManager plugin does already do what you want, except that it doesn’t do so automatically.
I would definitely be prepared to add an automatic feature that switches to an appropriate monitor setup when the displays in use change.
That does sound like what I’d expect from OS X
If you could implement that… I would simply be delighted!