Move your chat and browser to the second monitor when a game starts

Every evening the same drag: the game opens, and the chat, the guide and the music have to be pushed onto the other monitor by hand. Here is how to make them go there by themselves.

Why the windows never stay put

Most programs reopen where they were last closed, so it looks as if Windows remembers. Then a game starts at a different resolution, or takes over the main monitor, and Windows shuffles everything that was open to make room. Your chat lands behind the game, the browser ends up on the wrong screen, and you are back to dragging.

Chat apps make it worse: most of them have no option to always open on a particular monitor. Many people have asked for one in their support forums for years.

Doing it by hand

Windows gives you shortcuts - Win + Shift + Left or Right arrow sends the active window to the next monitor - but nothing in it reacts to a game starting. So it is the same few presses every evening, window by window, and the same again to put everything back afterwards.

Make it happen by itself, with a preset

Open Stillward Display. Your installed games are already listed - pick the one you play.
The setup window shows your monitors the way they stand on your desk. Click the second monitor and pick a layout: halves, thirds, or one big spot and two small ones.
Choose what goes in each spot: your chat app, a guide or map as a web page, your music player.
Save. One line above the Save button tells you in plain words when the preset will start and when it will end.

Next time you launch the game, the windows move to their spots on their own. Anything that is not running yet - the chat, the music - is started first. A web page opens in a window of its own, so your other tabs stay where they were. When you quit the game, every window goes back to where it was before.

What else the same preset can do

Switch your sound to the headphones while you play, and back to the speakers afterwards.
Keep the mouse inside the game, so it never slips onto the second monitor mid-fight.
Switch a third monitor off while you play.
Start from a key instead of the game: give the preset a keyboard shortcut.

Good to know

It needs no administrator rights and never touches the game itself. Windows keeps the windows of apps that run as administrator for itself; those stay where they are, and Stillward Display tells you so.

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