Jan 16, 2018

Multiple desktops in Windows 10

I know Linux and Mac users have been using multiple desktops for ages. I know people like my sister and husband, who surf between five to ten desktops with ease. I'm not one of those. I don't even like to use two monitors. I need focus. I need to have everything I need visible to me one way or the other at all times. That's why I have a dozen tabs open in browsers, multiple browsers open at the same time, current work open in app windows that I don't close after work.

You can probably guess that I was not one of the early adapters of multi desktop when Windows (finally, if you ask many) got it. It took me quite some time to brew the idea in my head that I could use more than one desktop. Then one day I did it. I divided my stuff to two desktops: personal and work.

This is a really nice divide, since I use the same laptop for work and personal stuff. When I work, my personal stuff is invisible, and when I'm off work, my work stuff is invisible. Well, mostly, since new email icon does show on Outlook icon on the taskbar even on the other desktop.


While I definitely like this new way of managing my apps and browsers etc. there are things that I wish would improve.
  1. When the laptop reboots itself due to an update, it would be totally awesome, if the apps and windows would actually open to the same desktop they were on before, instead of going all haywire.
  2. When I launch an app, say new OneNote window or open a Word document from Windows Explorer, it would be awesome if the app window would open to the desktop I'm on, instead of opening to the other one (when I might have the app open there for a different purpose).
  3. When I click on a link in an email, it would be awesome if the webpage would open to the browser instance open in that same desktop instead of switching to the same browser (but original instance, I guess) on the other desktop.
You get the drift? It think in short one could say that the desktop awareness in Windows  is not very good. Things should be executed on the desktop the user is using, not some other one simply because the same app was originally registered there. 

Of course all of this is repairable, but moving windows from desktop to the other every time I launch something gets kinda old. I would imagine Microsoft developers could do something to insulate the desktops better and prevent this highly annoying cross-launching.

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