🪑 WindowSeat

WindowSeat opens new application windows on the monitor you are actively working on — no manual dragging required.

Windows 11 has no built-in setting to control which monitor new windows appear on. WindowSeat fills that gap with a lightweight background utility that watches for new windows and quietly moves them to the right place.

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Features

• Cursor-based detection — windows open on whichever monitor your mouse is on
• Taskbar-based detection — windows open on the monitor whose taskbar you last interacted with
• Per-app exclusions — tell WindowSeat to leave specific apps alone (e.g. Spotify, Discord)
• System tray — runs silently in the background; right-click to access settings or toggle on/off
• Auto-starts with Windows — enabled by default; toggle in Settings
• Update notifications — notified when a new release is available on GitHub (no auto-update)
• No telemetry — zero data collection, no cloud dependency, settings stored locally

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Requirements

• Windows 11 (Windows 10 22H2+ best effort)
• No administrator rights required

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Installation

1. Download the latest WindowSeat.msix from the Releases page
2. Double-click the .msix file and follow the installer prompts
3. WindowSeat starts automatically and appears in your system tray

Note: Because WindowSeat is not yet signed with a trusted certificate, Windows may show a SmartScreen warning on first install. Click More info → Run anyway to proceed. See docs/user-guide.md for full details.

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Usage

After installation, WindowSeat runs in the background. Look for the 🪑 icon in your system tray.

Right-click the tray icon to:

• Open Settings
• Enable / disable WindowSeat
• Check for updates
• Exit

Settings let you:

• Switch between cursor-position and last-active-taskbar detection
• Add or remove per-app exclusions
• Toggle auto-start at login
• Toggle update notifications

For a full walkthrough see docs/user-guide.md.
For advanced configuration see docs/power-user-guide.md.

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Building from Source

Prerequisites

• .NET 10 SDK
• Visual Studio 2022 (17.8+) with the Windows application development workload, or VS Code with the C# Dev Kit extension

Clone and build

git clone https://github.com/stmba/WindowSeat.git
cd WindowSeat
.\scripts\build.ps1

Run tests

dotnet test src/WindowSeat.Tests/WindowSeat.Tests.csproj

See docs/contributing.md for full developer setup.

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Project Structure

WindowSeat/
├── src/
│   ├── WindowSeat.App        # WPF app — tray icon, settings UI, entry point
│   ├── WindowSeat.Core       # Window hooks, monitor detection, window mover
│   ├── WindowSeat.Settings   # Settings model, JSON persistence, startup registry
│   └── WindowSeat.Tests      # xUnit tests
├── docs/
│   ├── user-guide.md
│   ├── power-user-guide.md
│   └── contributing.md
├── scripts/
│   └── build.ps1
└── packaging/                # MSIX packaging project

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Known Limitations

• UWP / Microsoft Store apps (e.g. Settings, Calculator) resist programmatic window repositioning — WindowSeat detects and skips these gracefully
• Apps with internal window placement logic (e.g. some Electron apps) may override WindowSeat's repositioning
• Windows 10 support is best effort; primary target is Windows 11

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please read docs/contributing.md before opening a pull request.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.