Monitile guide

The two components

Monitile is made of two programs that work together. Knowing who does what makes everything else clearer.

To open the Editor: double-click the icon in the notification area, or right-click it and choose Open Editor. Closing the Editor window does not close Monitile. To really quit, right-click the icon and choose Exit.

Installation

Monitile requires Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit. No additional components are needed: everything required ships inside the program.

1. Download Monitile from the website.
2. Run the downloaded file and follow the setup.
3. On first launch the icon appears in the notification area. From there, open the Editor and capture your first session.

The installation is per user: it does not require administrator rights and does not touch the rest of the system.

Sessions

A session is a snapshot of how your windows are laid out: which programs were open, on which monitor, in what position, at what size and in which state (normal, maximised, minimised).

You can have as many as you like, and it pays to: one for work, one for accounting, one for when you are travelling with just the laptop screen. Each one is independent and can be recalled at any time.

Monitile does not save the content of your programs — not the open documents, not the browser tabs, not the text you were typing. It saves where the windows were, not what was inside them.

Capturing a session

Arrange the windows the way you want them, then capture. There are two ways, with the same result:

• in the Editor, the Capture button at the top of the session list;
• by right-clicking the icon in the notification area → Capture current session, without opening anything.

The new session gets a name based on date and time — for example Session 2026-08-05 14:30 — and automatically becomes the active session. Rename it right away to something you will recognise: a week from now "Session 2026-08-05 14:30" will mean nothing to you, "Accounting" will.

Restoring a session

Select a session in the Editor and press Restore; or, faster, right-click the icon in the notification area and pick the Restore: name entry. The dot ● next to an entry marks the active session.

Windows that are already open get reused

This is the difference that matters. Monitile first looks at what you already have open: if a program from the session is already running, its window is moved into place, not reopened. Only what is really missing gets launched. When it is done you are not left with two Chromes, two editors and two mail windows to close by hand.

Matching a saved window to an open one relies on several signals: first of all the same executable, then the program's full path, the identity of apps installed from the Store, the window class, the title and how close it is to the saved position. If no window reaches enough confidence, Monitile prefers to launch the program rather than move the wrong window.

What gets skipped, and why

When it finishes, the Editor's status bar sums up the outcome: how many windows were repositioned, how many launched, how many skipped and how many failed.

Different monitors from back then

Monitile remembers which screen each window was on. If that screen is no longer there, the window is placed on the primary monitor instead of ending up in an invisible area. Sizes are rescaled if the new monitor has a different scaling (for example from a 4K at 150% to a Full HD at 100%), so the proportions stay right. If a window would still end up off screen, it is brought back into the visible area.

The active session

Among all your sessions, one is the active one. It is the one Monitile treats as "yours" and it gets special treatment:

• it is the session restored at login, if you turned on automatic startup;
• it is the session that continuous capture keeps up to date;
• it is the session re-applied when the monitor configuration changes — for example when you plug an external screen back in.

To change it: select a session in the Editor and press Set as active. Every new capture becomes active automatically.

Automatic startup and restore at login

This is the feature that makes Monitile invisible: you turn the computer on, log in, and a few seconds later your windows are where you left them.

Turn it on with the Restore automatically at login switch in the Editor, or from the icon's menu with the Start automatically at login entry (the tick mark shows it is on).

From then on Monitile starts by itself when you sign in and restores the active session. Technically it creates a Windows scheduled task called Monitile Tracker; if the system does not allow that, it falls back to a regular startup entry. Turning the switch off removes both.

Managing sessions

Select a session in the list on the left: the panel on the right shows the available actions and the list of stored windows.

Below the actions you find Global shortcut, which assigns a key combination to the session; it is a Pro feature. Further down, Captured windows lists what the session contains: useful for understanding why a restore did not do what you expected.

Pro features

Capture, restore, unlimited sessions and restore at login are free and stay free. The Pro version adds three automations. In the Editor the corresponding controls stay visible even without a licence, but disabled.

The first fourteen days are already Pro

You do not have to ask for anything and you do not have to sign up: from the first launch the three Pro features are on for fourteen days. The clock starts when you open the program for the first time, not when you install it, so if you download it today and try it next week you have lost nothing.

During the trial the badge next to Licence reads Trial and shows how many days are left. When it ends the three features switch off and the badge goes back to Free: nothing else gets locked. Capture, restore, saved sessions and automatic startup keep working as before, forever.

Auto-switch based on monitors Pro

Monitile recognises the combination of screens you are using. When it changes — you undock the laptop, plug in a monitor at the hotel, come back to your desk — it looks among your sessions for the one captured on that same configuration and restores it by itself, making it the active session too. If it finds more than one, it picks the most recent.

In practice: capture one session while docked and another while on the laptop screen alone. From then on you will never have to touch anything.

Global shortcuts Pro

Assign a session a combination between Ctrl+Alt+1 and Ctrl+Alt+9 and you can recall it from any program, without opening anything. It is set from the Global shortcut menu in the details panel, and it takes effect immediately.

Each combination can be assigned to one session only. If a shortcut does not respond, it is usually because another program has already taken it: pick a different one.

Continuous capture Pro

With continuous capture you no longer have to remember to press Recapture: Monitile updates the active session by itself while you work, roughly every 45 seconds. If you have not moved anything in the meantime, nothing is written to disk.

It is handy if the way you work evolves over the day. If instead you have composed a "perfect" layout that you always want back exactly as it is, keep it off: otherwise every window moved by accident ends up being stored.

Activating the Pro licence

After the purchase you receive a licence key by email: a long string of characters. To activate it:

1. open the Editor;
2. expand the Licence section at the top of the settings panel;
3. paste the key into the field and press Activate.

The badge next to "Licence" switches to Pro, the email address the licence is registered to appears, and the three Pro controls unlock. Nothing needs restarting. If you buy during the trial, the licence takes over from the trial period immediately: you do not have to wait for it to run out and you do not lose the remaining days, because from that moment you no longer need them.

Verification happens on your computer, without contacting any server: the licence keeps working offline, and even if one day the website were no longer there. The Remove licence button takes the program back to the free version.

Excluding apps from capture

Some programs make no sense in a session: a music player, a chat you always keep in a corner, a utility that positions itself. In the Editor, open Apps excluded from capture, type the executable's name — for example spotify.exe — and press Add.

Windows belonging to those programs will no longer be captured or restored. The file name is enough: no full path needed, and the .exe extension is added for you if you leave it out.

Windows of administrator programs

Windows prevents a program with normal rights from moving the windows of a program started as administrator. This is an operating-system protection, not a Monitile limitation.

If your session contains a program of this kind — a management tool, a terminal opened as administrator — that window stays where it is while all the others fall into place. It is still saved in the session and you find it in the list of captured windows; in the restore summary it shows up among the "skipped" entries. No error, no hang: the rest of the restore proceeds normally.

What gets captured and what does not

Monitile only considers the "real" windows on the desktop. The following are ignored automatically:

• windows without a title and programs' service windows;
• tool windows and child panels, which belong to a main window;
• windows sitting on another Windows virtual desktop, and suspended Store apps;
• the Monitile Editor window;
• the programs you put among the excluded apps.

For each stored window Monitile saves the originating program, the monitor, position and size, the state (normal, maximised or minimised) and the window title, which is used to tell windows apart when the same program has more than one. Maximised windows come back maximised, minimised ones come back minimised.

What Monitile does not know

Monitile does not record the arguments programs were started with. It does not store which document you had open, which address you were visiting or which folder you were browsing: that information is simply never collected.

This is a choice with a price, and it is the limit described just below: since it cannot know which folder a File Explorer window contained, Monitile is unable to reopen it. The limit and the guarantee are the same thing.

The only piece of data that might refer to content is the window title, which often includes the name of the open document or page. It is used to recognise windows and it stays, like everything else, in a file on your disk: it is never transmitted anywhere.

Where your data lives

Everything Monitile saves sits in a single folder on your computer:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Monitile

You can paste that path into File Explorer's address bar to open it. Inside you find:

To back it up, or to move your sessions to another computer, copy the whole folder. No data is sent anywhere else: Monitile has no accounts, collects no statistics and does not connect to the internet.

Troubleshooting

A window does not move

It almost always belongs to a program started as administrator, which Windows protects from outside manipulation: see Windows of administrator programs. It can also happen with programs that force their own position at startup, and with full-screen windows, which must first be brought back to windowed mode.

A program was reopened instead of being reused

It means Monitile did not recognise the open window as the saved one. It happens with programs that open very different-looking windows, or that run inside another process. The most effective fix is to recapture the session in the configuration you actually use: matching improves when the saved data reflects the real situation.

A program is not reopened

Check in Captured windows which program it is. If you have uninstalled or moved it in the meantime, Monitile skips it on purpose. If it is File Explorer, see the known limitation above.

Windows end up in the wrong place after changing monitors

With Pro, capture a session dedicated to that screen configuration: auto-switch will recognise it. Without Pro, restore the right session manually.

A shortcut does not work

It is already taken by another program. Windows gives global combinations to the first one that asks for them: pick another number.

Seeing what happened

The file logs\tracker.log in the data folder records every capture and every restore, with the outcome line by line: which windows were reused, which programs launched and which entries skipped, with the reason. It is the first place to look when something does not add up — and it is also the most useful thing to attach if you write to info@monitile.app.

Command line

For advanced uses — automation, startup scripts, tests — the resident component accepts a few commands. Run it from the installation folder:

Uninstalling

1. In the Editor, turn off Restore automatically at login: this removes the scheduled task that starts the program when you sign in.
2. Right-click the icon in the notification area → Exit.
3. Uninstall Monitile from Windows Settings, under Apps > Installed apps.

The data folder is not removed: sessions and licence stay in place, so if you reinstall you find everything again. To delete those too, remove %LOCALAPPDATA%\Monitile by hand.