Desktop

The Desktop tab contains useful functions that work with the Windows™ Desktop:

• Save and Restore of the application state: `Application State` means which applications are currently running, what documents they display or for which functionality they were started (actually their full commandline), and also the exact appearance of all the applications (window location, window size, minimized/maximized/restored state).
  
  Additionally included in the state are also all folders that are currently open on the Windows Desktop (File Explorer folders). If you have for example the Downloads folder open, it will be reopened if you restore the state. It's even supported to have multiple windows open on the same folder. Folders that are already open will just get their previous appearance restored. If more folders are open, the superfluous ones will be closed (you can choose whether to do that or not). Also to mention: The restore function has the ability to automatically reconnect a sleeping network drive if a folder shows its content.
  
  For each saved application, it is also remembered whether the application ran with user or administrator rights. When restoring, the applications are then started again with the same rights.
  
  You can save multiple such application states giving them names. When you do a certain task with your PC that requires some open applications and explorer folders (eg. compiling your tax records) you can just save this state once and later restore it whenever you need it. This way you can reorganize your desktop in a jiffy by just clicking a button.
  
  The function contains a special logic for LibreOffice documents. There, all open windows are managed by a single process, which itself saves only the state of one document. Mighty Desktop, however, can save and restore the state of each individual document as if each were a single application.
  
  This function is also especially useful for application extension developers (eg. a Visual Studio or File Explorer AddIn). Typically the programmer will make a change at the extension and then he will have to restart all instances of the app as well as reopen all File Explorer windows. He/she will have to do that many times. Mighty Desktop can reduce that to just one click.
  
  If Mighty Desktop needs to close an application because it is not part of the state that should be restored it will use the softest closing method possible, and not just kill the app. See more in the page Process List.
  
  Note that the functions can also be called by the icon in the Windows Tray. If you hold the [Shift] key while restoring, only the File Explorer windows will be restored and if you hold the [Ctrl] key, windows not in the state will be closed.
  
  Notes:
  
  • Only applications with windows that contain at least 1 pixel are stored. There are some applications that set their window to zero size while being minimized. Those can't be stored because many applications and services have zero size windows that are never shown to the user and just there for technical reasons.
    
    
  • If LibreOffice has opened several documents with the same name from different folders, the status recovery may be reversed. But this is not a big deal. This might be improved in a later version.
    
    
  • Window properties of applications running with higher privileges than Mighty Desktop may not be restored by Mighty Desktop. For such cases, it is recommended to run Mighty Desktop in Administator mode (see About tab).
    
    
  • Restore resp. Resume will usually show some errors about windows not found anymore. That's perfectly ok because some applications don't restore their windows at a restart. In this context these errors should be seen just as warnings.
    
    
  • More notes in the page of Suspend-Resume.
    
    
• Save and Restore of icon positions: Some operations in the system can have the negative side effect to destroy your beloved icon arrangement on the desktop. For example if you change the Desktop resolution some icons are moved or even all of them get rearranged. The same happens if you switch to another monitor (for example for presentations) if this monitor has a different height or width. Furthermore, some games, game updates or graphic driver updates can alter the screen resolution temporarily which provokes a rearrangement of icons.
  
  I for myself prefer to have the icons always at a fixed location so I can click them intuitively. There is a copy of the arrangement in my mind and I want to keep it. With this function in the Desktop tab you can save multiple named configurations and restore them later on whenever you need them. In contrast to other products, the save and restore of Mighty Desktop also works when multiple monitors are attached and form a combined desktop.
  
  
• Restart Desktop: After some operations (eg. Registry changes) the Windows Desktop needs to be restarted to reflect the changes. Many people do it by brutally killing the 'explorer.exe' task. This is not recommended because it can lead to data loss and abandoned files. This function is different, it does it in a nice and harmless way and it also reopens the previously open folder windows and reapplies the window's previous appearances (see function "Restore application state"). The function can also be used to start the Windows Desktop after it was killed manually.
  
  Since the Windows Desktop does only save the infos like icon positions and settings to the drive at a regular shutdown, the function can also be used to indirectly provoke a save of that data at any time without having to restart the whole machine. If that data is not saved for days or even weeks it can be lost at an unexpected power out or reboot (ie. Blue Screen). Today an unexpected reboot happens nearly always only as a result of a failed wake-up operation following a sleep or if a device driver is malfunctioning.
  
  
• Repairing Icon Positions: Shifts icons outside the visible region back into the visible monitor
  
  
• Repairing Blank Icons: Sometimes Windows messes up its internal cache of the icons on the desktop. The result are icons that are completely white. This function forces Windows Desktop to rebuild the icon cache.
  
  
• Monitor on/off: Sometimes it is very useful to leave the monitor on against the automatic power off function. Especially also to prevent the computer from switching to energy-saving mode. After all, you don't want to go to the control panel and switch the energy-saving mode every time.

  On the flip side, it can also be useful to keep a notebook's monitor off all the time when you're not in the room to conserve battery power, even if there's a process running that periodically wakes up the monitor. You can now tell Mighty Desktop to turn the monitor on or off when you move the mouse pointer to a corner of the monitor and leave it there.
  
  

Besides all these functions the Desktop tab can give you these informations:

• How many monitors Windows thinks that you have attached
  
  
• The extents of the monitor Mighty Desktop is running on
  
  
• The extents of the entire Windows Desktop which spans multiple monitors
  
  
• The aspect ratio of the monitor Mighty Desktop is running on (4:3, 16:9 aso.)
  
  
• The current mouse coordinates that you are pointing to (you could measure something with that)
  
  

Note that the saved application state and icon position sets can easily be transported to another computer by the buttons in the Settings tab.