PhotoFactor
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After over a decade, Windows finally adds this feature and it's still a joke compared to the usability in Linux.
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Poll: virtual desktops on W10
- Thread starter CAcreeks
- Start date
James Gaston
Forum Enthusiast
Yep, use them all the time. I have four going and can quickly swap between them. Very useful.
PHXAZCRAIG
Forum Pro
It was on SLED. First demo'd at Brainshare, but I saw it on the production distro and played with it several times. It was easy to use, but SLED was a pain.
Not really, you can use the keyboard to switch screens: win+ctrl+l/r arrow key.
On a laptop you can use gestures: 3 finger swipe.
And you can use task view with win+tab.
It is a very similar experience as Mac OS or even Linux, though not the same as back in the day where you had a visual selector for desktops and how they were arranged. There is absolutely nothing horrid or impossible to the implementation of virtual desktop in windows.
That said, I don't use it anywhere but on my laptop. My desktop is connected to a 21:9 screen so I'd rather use the desktop real-estate available to me there. On a small laptop screen (and with the gestures) it's a great way to organize lots of windows.
OMG, that works on a Macbook!
I searched for MacOS keyboard shortcuts to change desktops, and struck out.
F3 on Macbook Air.
Linux Mint has a nice feature where you can move an icon on the panel (taskbar) to the virtual desktop of your choice.
Chacun à son goût. Virtual desktops are useful on a huge monitor for separating tasks.
Thanks for info about repurposing the three-finger salute. ;-)
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It's not bad on Windows either.
You click Win+Tab and it takes you to "Task View" screen where all desktops are visible as miniatures.
You hover over one of them and it shows all windows available. You can drag them to another desktop (including a new one - it'll be created automatically).
I love how clean it is. When you're in a particular desktop, there's no sign that others exist. And when you opened an app that already runs in another desktop, it automatically starts a new session.
I don't know how this works on MacOS, but I've never seen any stock Linux with something even nearly as clean and easy to use.
Also, for some reason unknown to me, in some DEs new desktops (or "workspaces") use significant amounts of resources - like if it was running separate sessions of DE (which it may be doing, I've never checked).
I don't think there's a limit of how many virtual desktops you can run on Windows. And there's no visible impact on resources.
I've used the virtual desktops on my tower PC since Microsoft introduced them and find them of great value. I run 3 desktops, the 1st with email, web browser, and Spotify; the 2nd with PDF software (up all the time) and a file manager; and the 3rd with photo editing programs. That basic organization lets me know "where I am" - it would be useful if Microsoft allowed us to have different backgrounds for each.
The desktops are easy to switch between and it lets me get more "mileage" from my 24" monitor.
For my work laptop, I typically use 2 desktops.
The desktops are easy to switch between and it lets me get more "mileage" from my 24" monitor.
For my work laptop, I typically use 2 desktops.
MacOS allows that. I have Catalina island on one, and Big Sur coastline on another, both of which change by time of day.
The poster above (pkosewski) likes that each virtual desktop has a separate process instance of an application, but I find it confusing. Why would anyone want that?
Also I find the timeline useless, but perhaps it can be disabled, like browser New Tab = Blank.
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If you do not want to have each virtual desktop to have its own seperate processes, in settings (Setting > System > Multitasking) under "Virtual Desktops" set " On the taskbar, show windows that are open on" to "All desktops". Now when you hit the icon on your taskbar, instead of opening a new window on your current desktop, it will jump to the window and desktop you have already open.
So if you have your browser open in desktop 1 and you are on desktop 2, hitting your browser icon in the taskbar will switch you to desktop 1 and set your browser window active. It just depends on what you want and what you feel is logical behavior. It's Windows, not MacOS. You can actually change behavior.
As far as Timeline: Settings > Privacy > Activity history, uncheck both. Scroll down, toggle accounts under "show activities from these account". Done.
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Gijs from The Netherlands
Nikon D800/Fuji X-T1
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Well, why not?
You may be doing separate things - like work and personal stuff. Or separate work projects. Or you're using a program that doesn't offer any kind of "tabs" functionality (can't work on multiple files).
Or - and this surely the use case I've seen the most - you're simply running long computation in Excel (which locks it), but you want to keep working in the meantime.
Generally speaking: there are many apps that don't have any kind of "tabs" functionality. And even for some that do, you may still prefer isolated instances - like in the Excel case.
And that's even before you start thinking about programming, when this kind of encapsulation becomes super useful.
As was already noted: this behaviour can be changed.
But the multi-session approach allows a more flexible work style, so IMO people that like Virtual Desktops will probably keep it on most of the time.
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
Hmmm - that's interesting. I'm still on Office 2007 so this may have changed - but one of the things that annoys me is that I've never been able to find a way to have two separate Excel windows open at the same time. Is Virtual Desktops a way around this? And if so, is there a way I can get the separate windows to display simultaneously on two different monitors (of the 3 that I use)?
Are you sure? I have an older version (Excel 2003). If I double-click my Excel desktop icon three times, I get three windows. Each of them can be put anywhere on my three monitors. If you want to have all of them open the same Excel spreadsheet, two of them have to be read-only, but I can understand that.
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
HA! You are right! Terrific tip, thanks so much!
Is there any chance that there's a secret command line option so that I can create a shortcut to an Excel spreadsheet that opens in its own window instead of in an existing one?
Edit: I think I found it. I have to manually create a shortcut with a command line that runs the Excel program and specifies the file name, rather than just right-clicking the ".xls" file and choosing "Create Shortcut".
I learned something new after using this program for 14 years...!
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Yes, likewise on MacOS I can start multiple Excel windows with File > New.
Regarding multiple application instances on different virtual desktops, it is useful with the Linux Terminal, or by analogy PowerShell or Cmd. Also File Explorer, I suppose. For virtual machines, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc, it's useless because you can't comfortably run more than one without gobs of memory.
Nice that it's available and configurable, though.
This way you open 3 files in the same session, not 3 sessions.
A few ways to open multiple sessions are shown here:
Open Excel files in Separate Instances or Multiple Windows
Learn how to open multiple instances of Excel. Having a separate instance allows you to run an intensive task while you work in another window.
gorilla.bi
You can open multiple sessions without Virtual Desktops. What I meant earlier is that Virtual Desktops do this by default (when you open the same app in 2 different desktops).
This is important because opening a program in a virtual desktop won't affect whatever is already running.
Yes, but for that you only need multiple sessions when the software can't run separate windows.
Office lets you open many files and each one gets a window (you can put in anywhere you want). But it's the same session ("engine") underneath.
But running multiple Office (especially: Excel) sessions (instances) has a few advantages. Actually, if you google "excel multiple sessions", you'll see this is quite a popular topic.
Do you know Notepad++? (If you don't, give it a try!
)Notepad++ allows opening multiple files as tabs, but it can only run a single window. So you need multiple session to comfortably use it on multiple monitors.
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
Running Excel as a program with the filename as an argument works great. It creates multiple independent windows for each file. My problem was that I had created all these shortcuts that specified the name of the ".xlsx" file and let the system choose which program to run for them, and it always activated the already-running instance of Excel. And then I was frustrated by not being able to find any way within the Excel 2007 window to drag a worksheet off into its own screen like, for example, you can do with web browser tabs.
I've been using Notepad++ for many years, and one of the things I love about it is that you can have multiple windows. You do it exactly the same way you would for a web browser, you grab one of the tabs and drag it off to a different part of the desktop.Do you know Notepad++? (If you don't, give it a try!
Notepad++ allows opening multiple files as tabs, but it can only run a single window. So you need multiple session to comfortably use it on multiple monitors.
But it opens a new program instance.
Notepad++ can't run separate windows in a single session.You can also right-click on a tab name and use "move to new instance" in the menu.
This is what you'll see in Task Manager:
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
You moved the goalposts. First you were talking about not being able to run multiple windows, now you're talking about having to run multiple instances of a program.But it opens a new program instance.
To me, it's a distinction without a difference. What I want is multiple windows, what I got is multiple windows. I don't really care if there are multiple copies of NotePad++ or even Excel running, I've got cores and RAM a-plenty and those programs are peanuts compared to some of the other stuff I run like Premiere Pro or DaVinci resolve. And my three monitors give me all the screen real estate I need without having to flip between sessions.
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Well, if you don't understand and see the difference, you don't have to care. I never said this is important for everyone. I said it's good that MS does this by default when using different virtual desktops - because the user doesn't have to care about possible conflicts and side effects.
But the difference is really easy to understand on the Excel example.
If you're running multiple Excel windows (files) in a single instance, they share a "computing engine". This is necessary, because Excel files opened in the same instance are treated as one workspace (you can create relations between them). This means that:
- if one window (file) is recalculating, it will halt all windows in this instance,
- if one window crashes during these calculations, it will almost surely take the whole instance with it.
When you run different instances, they are really separate.
It's a very common sight in a financial company (and I've worked in insurance for 8 years
): people are sitting on front of their PCs and wait until some Excel tasks completes. Because Excel is the only tool they use and they don't have anything to do when it's locked. Similar threads
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