In OS X is there a way to assign an application window to a specific monitor?

Question

I know that with OS X Lion (10.7) and Mountain Lion (10.8) applications can be assigned to specific Spaces/Desktops. With my laptop I daily connect and disconnect from an external monitor. When I disconnect, all my app windows are automatically gathered to the laptop monitor, of course.

When I reconnect to the external monitor, I manually move my app windows back to the second screen. Is there some functionality that is built into OS X that would automatically restore those application windows back to where they were previously?

Solution 1

This has been fixed in Mavericks. To control on which display an application's windows appear, move your cursor to the Dock icon for that application. Right-click (or Ctrl-click) on the icon, then select Options > Desktop on Display 1 (or 2). You also have the option to assign to all desktops or to none.

Solution 2

I never tried it myself but I think this is what you are looking for:

http://cordlessdog.com/stay/

Comments

[SunSparc]

So far the answers are directing me to third party applications. Perhaps OS X does not have a setting or option that would natively handle this.

[SunSparc]

Update, this feature seems to be built in with Mavericks. Though that does not address the question for previous versions of the OS.

[SunSparc]

I had actually seen this will Googling my question before asking here. I will look into it further. Though I was hoping there was some functionality built into OS X that I could bend to my will. :)

[SunSparc]

Perhaps similar to the Stay suggestion. I will take a look. Thanks.

[wst]

I use Stay, and it's great, but it doesn't always behave as expected with regard to Spaces. I've chatted with the developer, and evidently it's a limitation of OSX APIs and it very difficult to work around.

[Robin]

Stay looked promising but it can't handle X11 applications launched from remote machine =(

[SunSparc]

I would consider selecting this as an answer if you took more time to provide helpful details. As it is, I can only guess about the exact steps to recreate exactly what you are trying to describe. :)

[lukethompson]

I made some edits and hope it's more useful now.

[frabcus]

When I unplug the monitor and plug it back in it seems to forget this setting. I'm setting the monitor as a primary device though.