WindowHerder
What is WindowHerder?
Simply put, WindowHerder is a way to take a snapshot of how you have your open windows arranged at a particular time, and quickly restore that state whenever you want. I find that when I’m working I have things arranged precisely how I want them across my screens. That gets easily disrupted by new windows popping up or needing to switch out of that workflow for whatever reason, and rearranging things again manually gets tedious. With WindowHerder, one keystroke allows you to snap everything back into place and continue right where you left off.
Where Do I Get WindowHerder?
You can find the latest version of the application in the download section of its GitHub repository. Just extract the ZIP file, launch WindowHerder.exe and you’re good to go.
The source code is all freely available on GitHub as well, so feel free to poke around, see how things work under the hood, and even contribute if you’re so inclined.
How Do I Use WindowHerder?
Once you launch the application, it will be running in your system tray. Right clicking on the icon will give you access to all the functionality, but more often than not you’ll probably want to use the keyboard shortcuts since they make things much easier. WindowHerder has two main operations:
- Save State (Alt+F1): This will take a snapshot of how all your windows are arranged, and store them in memory.
- Restore State (Alt+F2): This will restore your latest snapshot, so that the windows are arranged as they were when you took the snapshot. The topmost window will be activated so it regains focus.
When restoring, WindowHerder will do its best to account for changes in open windows since the snapshot was taken. Windows that no longer exist will be ignored when restoring, so if you had closed the window that used to be on top, restoring the state will now put the second window on top and activate it. Any new windows that were opened since the snapshot will be placed behind all windows that were part of the snapshot.
WindowHerder will display a balloon tooltip from the system tray when it saves and restores state.
The Future of WindowHerder
I personally have a bunch of ideas of what I’d like to put into the application to make it better, but I’m definitely looking for some community feedback on this. Do you find this to be a useful application, or useless? Are there any must-have features you would need to see implemented before you could start using this regularly? Download WindowHerder and check it out, and shoot me an e-mail with any comments you have!
