Restow
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Bring your desktops back
where they belong.

When you reconnect an external monitor, macOS piles all its workspaces onto your laptop screen — and doesn't put them back on its own.
Restow remembers your layout and restores it from the menu bar in a single click.

Get the app Get in touch
Laptop screen 105
External monitor (Office) 5
After unplug — workspaces all piled onto the laptop Menu bar → Apply Layout — back where they belong

How it works

  1. 01

    Decide once how many workspaces each monitor should have

    Save your preferred setup — say, 5 workspaces on the office monitor, 7 on the home display, 3 on the living-room TV. Restow recognises each monitor automatically, so renaming them won't confuse it.

  2. 02

    When monitors come back, Restow knows what changed

    When a monitor is unplugged, macOS moves its workspaces to the end of your laptop screen and leaves them there even after you plug it back in. Restow keeps track of the difference between right now and your saved layout.

  3. 03

    One click from the menu bar puts everything back

    Click the menu bar icon → Apply Layout, and your workspaces return to where they were. Restow never touches your keyboard or trackpad — its permission is used only to rearrange your workspaces.

What it looks like

Apply Layout ⌘A
Settings… ⌘,
About Restow
Quit Restow ⌘Q
Menu bar dropdown
Restow Settings

Connected monitors

10
5

Saved monitors (not currently connected)

5
Settings — workspace count and name per monitor

Install

A one-click download will land once code signing is in place. If you'd like an early build before then, just say hi.

⬇ Download — coming Request a build

macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon · Free · No keyboard tracking

First run

  1. When you launch the app, macOS asks "Allow Restow to control your computer?" Click Open System Settings.
  2. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → turn Restow on. The ⚠ on the menu bar icon disappears within a few seconds.
  3. Menu bar icon → Settings… → set how many workspaces each monitor should have → Save. From then on, whenever you reconnect a monitor, just hit Apply Layout.

FAQ

I turned permissions on but the menu bar icon still shows ⚠

While Restow uses ad-hoc signing, macOS forgets the permission every time the app is rebuilt. The fix:

  1. System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility
  2. Select Restow → click ⊖ to remove
  3. Click ⊕ and re-add /Applications/Restow.app, then toggle it on

This goes away once we ship a properly-signed build.

I clicked Apply Layout and nothing happened

If your current monitor state already matches your saved layout, there's nothing to do — that's intentional. Open Settings, change the workspace count for one of your monitors, and try again.

It warns me that the currently visible desktop would be changed

macOS doesn't let anyone (including Restow) move or delete the desktop you're currently looking at. Switch to desktop 1 (or any desktop outside the range being changed) and try again.