That control doesn’t seem to apply to everything. I have always kept that option off, and most things restore properly. FaceTime is an exception, repeatedly defaulting to the main screen instead of the one it should sit on.
Turning off that option screws up Safari for me. Safari will open in last open tabs instead of new window.
What does Safari > Settings > General > New windows open with… say?
I think this is just due to Word (and Excel, and I presume PowerPoint) being totally weird and non-standard. What I think is happening is that Word opens its first window (the one to create new documents) on the screen where the menu bar is active. I can see some logic there, but it’s all too easy to have the menu bar active on a screen other than the one you’re looking at, so it just seems random.
And I don’t believe they offer any way of reopening documents that were open when you quit.
I see this as well—FaceTime always seems to open in the middle of my primary screen. Apple should be ashamed.
Hmm! I’m not seeing this with the current version of 1Password. On my Mac, with the Close Windows setting off, it remembers its screen and position properly.
In System Settings > Desktop & Dock, under Mission Control, see what “Displays have separate Spaces” is set to. For me it’s on, so each display has its own menu bar. If it’s off, you’ll have only one menu bar, but also only one Space.
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Adam, has anyone ever covered Stay on TidBITs? (I tried searching but “stay” is a pretty common term.)
I love it for putting windows back where I want them to be after a reboot or app restart.
It’s been… Checks archive… 30 years(!) since I’ve written for TidBITS but I’d be happy to write this up.
Stephen
I wasn’t aware of Stay, but there are a variety of such utilities, mostly aimed at laptop users who connect and disconnect from large displays regularly. Stay looks particularly focused. And it’s nice that it’s free, since the annoyance is often small enough that it can feel hard to justify buying a fix.
Adam, thanks a million! I never understood or paid attention to «spaces»: but now I’ve got my 3 menu bars back and it sleeps properly too.
In case no one told you today: you’re a genius!! And a helpful one at that!
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Thanks for that. I’ll have to check out Stay. I’ve been using DisplayMaid for the same purpose for a while, but Stay’s FAQ claims it can restore windows across Spaces (desktops), which DisplayMaid cannot do. It’s limited to one Space at a time, but you can have multiple profiles for that Space.
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I thought you were wrong, and I wrote a reply, but then thought I’d test my guess (that Apple once again messed up the terminology).
I have 4 desktops on monitor 1. I just tested DEVONthink in the Dock (it is open on Desktop 2 monitor 1) and the choices are Assign to > All Desktops, Desktop on Display 1, Desktop on Display 2 (checked), and None (checked). I always have to move it to the correct desktop manually after a reboot.
Accordance is on my Desktop 3 monitor 1, but its choices are the same as DEVONthink’s; there is no “Desktop on Display 3” option. Is this a problem with the often-confusing Apple terminology? When they say “Desktop on Display 2,” do they mean “the current desktop where it is now open” on your right-hand display?
That seems to be the case! I just tested both applications. In the Dock, I checked “Desktop on Display 1” for DEVONthink, then quit it (on Desktop 2 display 1). I returned to Desktop 1 and opened DEVONthink. The screen swept over to Desktop 2 and DEVONthink opened there. I then checked “Desktop on Display 1” for Accordance, quit it (on Desktop 3 display 1). I returned to Desktop 1 and opened Accordance. The screen swept over and Accordance opened there. I swiped down to bring up the Desktop switcher, and Accordance (the current desktop) was #2 (uh oh), but DEVONthink’s desktop was now #3; Accordance was not on top of DEVONthink. So, except for arranging the order of my desktops, this might have resolved my issue. Thank you SO MUCH for this tip!
Apple Mail always opens on the right-hand display, but then I don’t traditionally have extra desktops on that monitor. It’s checked “None” in the desktop assignment submenu.
Stay looks nice, but it claims it may not solve the problem of apps appearing on the wrong Space:
“Stay can store and restore windows across multiple Spaces/Desktops, however Stay cannot move windows between Spaces.”
So it seems that getting apps to open on the correct Space might not be doable with third-party tools. But see my earlier post about implementing @aforkosh ’s solution using Apple built-in functionality. It appears to solve the problem of allotment among Spaces, at least.
Why not close down old windows? – Seems like neither Apple nor Adam thinks of that as a possibility … . Otherwise I think the main point about why the default setting (now) is wrong is that you may accidentally close down an app and will have to consult your list of previously opened documents to figure out which documents you wanted to have open. Just like with browsers that sometimes do not remember the windows and tabs opened – normally one can turn it on in browsers and some let you open them from history easily, but if you do not notice it right away upon relaunching a browser – a lot of important tabs might be hard to find again. (Cmd+w is one of my most used shortcuts – try it sometime! ;-))
Today when I quit and re-started Word, it re-opened the files that had been open when it quit! Oh, that seems to be because I used Force Quit …, not because they’ve added this feature. — Or, not because they added it back in with all the weird stuff that MS does in their applications, as @ace pointed out. (Acknowledgment: This is a tangential topic to the thread. Still … Microsoft!)
Yes, Word has long had the ability to re-open documents that were open when it crashes. Not a bad thing, but yet another source of confusion. 
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