I have a 2021 16" M1 Max with 3 external displays. One display is plugged directly into the left side of the laptop. The other two displays are plugged into this OWC hub (OWCTB4HUB5P), which is also plugged into the left side of the laptop.
The displays all work fine in general, but I have constant problems with the laptop forgetting how the monitors are arranged, and which windows / desktops are on which screen. On my old intel MBP, this would happen ocassionally after unplugging all the screens and plugging them back in again, but even that was pretty reliable. On this machine, all I have to do is leave my desk for 5 minutes so that the laptop locks / sleeps, and when I come back everything is all over the place.
It's very frustrating having to open up the display settings, drag the displays around, and then move all my windows back to the correct screens every time I unlock my laptop.
I'm guessing this is just a flaw in the hardware or the OS but if anyone knows a way around it with some arcane setting or some third party software, I would love to know about it.
Solutions that I don't think will work (at least not fully):
- This answer, suggests assigning certain apps to certain displays, but that won't work for me as I often have multiple windows for the same app (e.g. multiple browser windows) which I spread across multiple desktops on multiple displays).
- displayplacer solves the issue of displays moving around, but not the problem of windows / desktops jumping to different displays
- Moom... doesn't work? I tried to set up a trigger to restore window arrangement when switching to 4 displays but nothing happened.
- Display maid I have not tried yet but it explicitly says that it can only interact with windows on the currently active space. I have at least 2 spaces/desktops on each of my 4 screens so that might be too limiting for me.
