Zed window should remember last window size and position when opening single files

[ksandvik]

Check for existing issues

• Completed

Describe the bug

When opening Zed it should remember previous window size and position when Zed was closed.

To reproduce

1. Open Zed, set expected window size and position.
2. Close Zed.
3. Open Zed again.

Expected behavior

Expected: previous window size/position is honored.
Now: Using same size and location at startup.

Environment

Zed 0.49.1 – /Applications/Zed.app \nmacOS 12.5 \narchitecture x86_64

If applicable, add mockups / screenshots to help explain present your vision of the feature

No response

If applicable, attach your ~/Library/Logs/Zed/Zed.log file to this issue

No response

[mikayla-maki]

Blocks on: https://github.com/zed-industries/feedback/issues/430

[rsms]

+1 — this is going to sound ridiculous, but it's a blocker for adaptation for me as I open a lot of temporary windows in my workflow (currently using Sublime.)

[iamnbutler]

+1 — this is going to sound ridiculous, but it's a blocker for adaptation for me as I open a lot of temporary windows in my workflow (currently using Sublime.)

I don't think it is ridiculous, it is a pain to reset everything up every time.

[jbergstroem]

This and a "recent" file menu (#77) is adding unnecessary friction to getting started with my work. Hard to measure the pain threshold, but its in the back of my mind every time I open Zed.

[benonymus]

An option to "reopen where left off" (last project and files open from before last close) would also be lovely!

[emlynmu]

This was the first thing I noticed when I launched the app. I'm glad to see other people care. The mention of serializable workspaces (#430) makes me worry about it being tied to saving a workspace. I basically only care about the default new window size which I would think would be tied to a new (unsaved) workspace.

[chriskrycho]

I just came here to say the exact same thing as @emlynmu – this should be separate behavior from serializing workspaces. On macOS, whenever you open a new window of an existing (well-behaved) application, it matches the size of the most recent¹ window. It should also open in a new position, offset down-and-to-the-right (with "wrapping" that respects positions of existing windows) behavior.

Here's how it looks with VS Code (it took them years to get to it, but they finally did 😂):

CleanShot.2022-11-17.at.10.06.38-converted.mp4

Footnotes

1. ish, there are subtleties; it's something like "most recent window which actually had focus" or "root window" when you have a hierarchy of windows etc. ↩

[mikayla-maki]

Thanks for the behavioral explanation @chriskrycho! :D

[JosephTLyons]

This should go out with v0.72.0.

[chriskrycho]

I regret to say: This is not quite fixed in 0.72.x, though it took a big step forward: It is fixed when saving workspaces, and appears to remember the position used for a specific folder, but the feature request here is for a muuuuuch more general feature! See e.g. my example above—and note as well that you can trivially reproduce this by just opening any folder and then opening any new window!

[stjepangolemac]

If I close Zed while fullscreen it still won't start in fullscreen mode. It would improve consistency if it would remember the mode across restarts.

[stjepangolemac]

Bump, cc @JosephTLyons

[widersky]

I think it would be ideal if the new editor window had the dimensions of the recently opened project window. Don't like it when a 'clean' window takes up the entire desktop.

[michealp-coder]

This is a problem for me as well (running v0.119.16), and super annoying as well.

I don't have any projects open. When I launch Zed, it's to an empty/blank new file window.

I'll adjust the size and location of the new file window, to my liking. I then close Zed.

When I reopen Zed, the window doesn't have the previous size/location of the window and instead reverts to being max width/height of screen.

CC: @mikayla-maki @JosephTLyons

(Thanks for all the great work on Zed)

[mekedron]

+1, it's crucial. I'm using 32:9 ultra wide monitor + Rectangle for resizing my windows. I know probably using such monitor isn't good for coding, but usually I place all my windows in the center of the screen, and it's fine for me.

When I want to quickly edit some files (e.g. "Open With... -> Zed.app"), every time the editor opens full screen and I need to manually adjust the size of the window.

What's interesting, is that the editor does remember the last position, but particularly for a single file, and it's not possible to remember window size and position for other files that were not open yet.

My Jetbains products and vs code does remember size/position, but zed does not, which is huge blocker.

[michealp-coder]

why hasn't it been fixed yet? this is probably the most annoying issue in Zed

be patient. also i actually like how it doesnt, so it my mind it should be an option

Given that no one is any longer assigned to this issue, we're going to have to be very patient indeed.

[mrnugget]

why hasn't it been fixed yet? this is probably the most annoying issue in Zed

It's hard to reproduce and also works for a lot of people.

I also think there's a lot of different things being lumped together subconsciously:

1. Creating new windows (cmd-n)
2. Opening Zed and it automatically reopening the last project
3. Storing size for a given project
4. Storing size for a given worktree

The video you provided @michealp-coder was already very helpful.

One ask for everybody in this ticket:

1. Can you provide detailed steps on how to reproduce the issue, that start with zed not running?
2. Can you reproduce the issue when you start with an empty Zed database?

In order to test (2) you can do the following:

# 1. Close Zed
# 2. Move `0-stable` database (or `0-preview` if you run Preview) to home dir
mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Zed/db/0-stable ~/0-stable-backup
# 3. Start Zed
# ... reproduce bug etc. etc. 
# 4. Quit Zed
# To restore DB, do the reverse:
mv ~/0-stable-backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/Zed/db/0-stable 

[NicoAdrian]

why hasn't it been fixed yet? this is probably the most annoying issue in Zed

It's hard to reproduce and also works for a lot of people.

I also think there's a lot of different things being lumped together subconsciously:

1. Creating new windows (`cmd-n`)

2. Opening Zed and it automatically reopening the last project

3. Storing size for a given project

4. Storing size for a given worktree

The video you provided @michealp-coder was already very helpful.

One ask for everybody in this ticket:

1. Can you provide detailed steps on how to reproduce the issue, _that start with zed not running_?

2. Can you reproduce the issue when you start with an empty Zed database?

In order to test (2) you can do the following:

# 1. Close Zed
# 2. Move `0-stable` database (or `0-preview` if you run Preview) to home dir
mv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Zed/db/0-stable ~/0-stable-backup
# 3. Start Zed
# ... reproduce bug etc. etc. 
# 4. Quit Zed
# To restore DB, do the reverse:
mv ~/0-stable-backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/Zed/db/0-stable 

How to reproduce:

1. Open Zed
2. Resize the window
3. Quit Zed
4. Open Zed

==> The window size is reset, i.e it doesn't remember the last window size.

Resetting the DB did not help

[mrnugget]

How to reproduce:

1. Open Zed
2. Resize the window
3. Quit Zed
4. Open Zed

==> The window size is reset, i.e it doesn't remember the last window size.

Resetting the DB did not help

That works for me:

screenshot-2024-07-04-15.36.54.mp4

Now the question is: what's different between what you do and what I do?

When you open Zed, for example, does it open a recent project?

[NicoAdrian]

How to reproduce:

1. Open Zed
2. Resize the window
3. Quit Zed
4. Open Zed

==> The window size is reset, i.e it doesn't remember the last window size.
Resetting the DB did not help

That works for me:
screenshot-2024-07-04-15.36.54.mp4

Now the question is: what's different between what you do and what I do?

When you open Zed, for example, does it open a recent project?

Ok I managed to make Zed remember the last window size. The issue is that I had no project openned ever:

So this is the bug: when no project is openned, Zed can't remember last window size.

(Also another annoying bug is that when I right click on the folder name and then click on "remove from project", If I quit Zed et re-open it again, the project is openned again even though I removed it)

edit: If you want to reproduce, the only way I found to remove recently openned project is to uninstall Zed et reinstall

[michealp-coder]

How to reproduce:

1. Open Zed
2. Resize the window
3. Quit Zed
4. Open Zed

==> The window size is reset, i.e it doesn't remember the last window size.
Resetting the DB did not help

That works for me:

screenshot-2024-07-04-15.36.54.mp4

Now the question is: what's different between what you do and what I do?

When you open Zed, for example, does it open a recent project?

@mrnugget

I think what's different is you're opening into an existing Project.

We are not. We don't have a project open. We're just opening individual files to edit them.

[michealp-coder]

Any progress on this bug?

[mrnugget]

In some sense, yes. I did work a lot on the restoring of workspaces/windows in the past few weeks:

• Restore unsaved buffers on restart #13546
• Preserve untitled files for next time #4985 (comment)
• Preserve untitled files for next time #4985 (comment)

But I didn't get to this one yet. It's highly-related to this #15098 but it's really tricky, because in Zed a window without any workspace (i.e. a window that was created when opening a single file) is essentially identity-less and we need to change the system so that's not the case. I did have half a version of this working, but there's a ton of edge cases to pay attention to and so I went and worked on the other things first.

[name-changer]

I see a (probably related) bug on current Wayland/KDE (the distro is OpenSuse Tumbleweed): when Zed (0.152.3) is not maximized, and I close and open the application, the window 'grows' bigger by a few pixel (maybe 20-30 or so, so it's quite noticeable).

After closing and opening a few times, I can't see the statusbar at the bottom anymore, because the window grows bigger than my current resolution. Since I typically only maximize my editor windows vertically, but not horizontally, this is a bit annoying, since I now have to periodically resize the way too large window.

[mrnugget]

@name-changer can you create a separate issue for that?

[name-changer]

@mrnugget : Done #17870

[nervenes]

any news on this?

[NicoAdrian]

any news on this?

It's frustrating yes :(

[probably-neb]

This is one of our oldest issues but definitely worth tracking. We've decided to move feature/enhancement requests to discussions so I'm going to move this there in the hopes it gets more visibility and stays on our radar better

[497e0bdf29873]

Zed should also remember desktops.

I use several separate Zed windows/workspace for every project, and each of them are on their own macOS workspaces/desktops. When restarting Zed (for updates of Zed itself, and when macOS starts to rot or wants to be updated), all the windows appear on a single desktop, and need to be manually moved to the appropriate ones. It would reduce reboot annoyance significantly if Zed—as the only app besides VSCode that I use(d) that doesn't do so—would remember the desktop of each window, and reopen it on that one.

There even seems to be a related bug: 'reload workspace' also moves all the windows to the same desktop. It seem that it's not reloading a single workspace, but all of them.