Comments on: Move All Windows To Your Main Screen…

By: Dan Harkless

Dan Harkless — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:28:46 +0000

You rock. This is one of those occasional areas where Mac OS sucks compared to Windows in not having a native solution for this issue, but this script takes care of that — thanks!!

By: Geoffrey Grosenbach

Geoffrey Grosenbach — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:30:43 +0000

Works perfectly for my MacBook Air and an occasional external monitor. I call it with LaunchBar.

Thanks!

By: Hendel

Hendel — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 05:45:04 +0000

Thanks for this - terrific solution to my problem. I normally run Mail.app on my second monitor, but haven’t found a VNC client that will let me access it remotely. When I’m out of town and forgot to push Mail over to the main monitor before I left, I’ve been stuck. Your script works great (though I had to use the modification to set screen size).

By: Jonathan Laliberte

Jonathan Laliberte — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:43:36 +0000

David,
Open the script in Script Editor, go to File->Save As…
Select File Format: Application, I recommend turning/leaving off all the check boxes presented.

By: David Brake

David Brake — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:45:57 +0000

Thanks - does just what I need (once I made the fix mooncaine asked for). And I can confirm it works on Leopard (in case there was any doubt).

Dumb question I know but how can I make the script into a mini-app so when I double-click on it it runs rather than launching the editor from which I have to choose “run”?

By: Life, it is a Travesty… » links for 2007-10-24

Life, it is a Travesty… » links for 2007-10-24 — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:44:37 +0000

[...] Move All Windows To Your Main Screen… at JonathanLaliberte.com (tags: osx windows offscreen onscreen monitor move) [...]

By: mooncaine

mooncaine — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:13:36 +0000

Thanks for that, because it did give me something useful. I made a copy of your script, called “gather windows to main display”, and used your suggested code block, except I set it for 800 and 600, so that the windows definitely cluster near the top left corner, no matter what screen res I choose [I change that setting often]. Great! Thanks!

I renamed the original version to “move offscreen windows to the main display” so I won’t be confused later — I often run my MBP attached to a 2nd monitor.

By: Jonathan Laliberte

Jonathan Laliberte — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:40:21 +0000

AFAIK, there is no way to get the size of the main display with Applescript (not easily anyway). The current Finder block gets the size of the desktop, which is going to be the size of all connected displays. The following change would accomplish what you are asking for though:

At the top of the script, remove the Finder tell block:
tell application “Finder”
set _b to bounds of window of desktop
set screen_width to item 3 of _b
set screen_height to item 4 of _b
end tell

replace it with:
set screen_width to
set screen_height to

So, if your screen resolution is 1440×900, you would have
set screen_width to 1440
set screen_height to 900

By: mooncaine

mooncaine — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:10:37 +0000

Brilliant idea. Could you write a script that would gather all the windows to the main display, even if there are other displays attached?