Guides
How to switch your whole multi-monitor desk with one key
One WindowLayout user has five screens: three in front of a sim racing rig and two on a normal desk. Before every race he switched two monitors off, lowered refresh rates, moved a monitor to another input and turned the brightness down, and afterwards did it all again in reverse. A scene in WindowLayout bundles those changes under one name: a display profile, monitor inputs, brightness for each monitor and a window profile. One hotkey, one tray click or one command applies all of it, and game mode can do it for you when a game starts and put the desk back when it ends.
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Save the building blocks first
A scene does not store displays or windows itself; it points to things you have already saved. On the Display Profiles page, arrange the monitors for the activity, switching off the ones you do not need and setting resolution and refresh rate, then save a profile such as Rig. On the Window Profiles page, save where the windows should be. If a monitor is shared with another computer or a console, save its inputs as favorites on the Input source page. You only need the parts you actually use.
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Create the scene
Open Scenes in the sidebar and choose New scene. Give it a name, then tick the parts it should change: a display profile, an input favorite for each monitor that should switch, a brightness value for each monitor, and a window profile. Untick anything that should stay as it is. The quicker way is From current state: set the desk up by hand, press the button and name it. WindowLayout saves the current displays and windows as profiles with that name, reads each monitor's brightness and picks the input favorites that match what the monitors show right now. Check the parts and save.
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Understand the order and the report
A scene always runs in the same order: display profile, then monitor inputs, then brightness, then window positions. The displays come first because they may switch a monitor on before it can take an input or a brightness value, and the windows come last so they land on the final layout. After Apply now, the page lists every step with its result. One failed step does not stop the others, but the scene is then reported as failed, never as done. An input switch is shown as sent, because a monitor does not confirm it, and each monitor still accepts only one input switch every 2 seconds.
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Give it a hotkey, a trigger or a command
In the editor, click the hotkey button and press a combination; WindowLayout refuses keys that its other hotkeys or input favorites already use and warns you if another program holds it. Scenes also appear in the tray menu, in the command palette and as the action Apply scene on the Triggers page, both for simple triggers and for condition rules. From Stream Deck, a script or Task Scheduler, run WindowLayout.exe --scene "Sim racing". Applied from the app window, the display part asks you to keep the new settings within 15 seconds; from a hotkey, trigger, tray or command line it applies right away, like a display profile hotkey.
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Let game mode switch it for you
Below the scene list, game mode watches for programs you name. Add the game's file name, for example acc.exe or iRacingSim64DX11.exe; you can paste the full path and only the file name is kept. Choose the scene and turn game mode on. When one of the programs starts, WindowLayout reads the current display configuration, the inputs it can read and the brightness, then applies the scene. When the last of those programs has been closed for a few seconds, it puts those three back. Game mode is off by default, and a game that is already running when you turn it on counts from its next start.
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Know what is put back and what is not
Game mode restores displays, brightness and the inputs that the monitors reported before the switch; a monitor that did not answer cannot be switched back, and the game mode card says so. Window positions are not moved back; use Undo last restore if you need that. If something cannot be restored, for example because a monitor was unplugged, WindowLayout logs it, opens its window and shows how many steps failed, so you are never left guessing.
Frequently asked questions
Does a scene need all four parts?
No. A scene can be as small as one brightness value or one input switch. Use only the parts you need, for example a display profile plus a window profile for work, or just two input favorites to move monitors to a laptop.
What happens if a profile used by a scene is deleted?
The scene keeps its other parts. The list marks the missing part, and applying the scene reports that step as failed while the rest still runs. Renaming a window profile updates the scenes that use it.
Can I apply a scene from my phone?
No. The phone remote has no scene action on purpose, because a scene can switch a monitor's input away from this PC, which could blank the screen you are controlling it from. Use a hotkey, the tray menu, a trigger or the command line instead.
Try it on your own desk
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