Window Layout Manager, or WiLMA, is a free and small application that allows the management of various desktop layouts – adding new ones, editing existing ones, configuring the options, all the basic things you can expect from any normal application. When closed or minimized it sits in the tray and offers a tray icon with quick access to layouts that are enabled (it’s possible to exclude layouts from populating the tray menu since some layouts are not meant to be applied directly).

A layout is a collection of window definitions that contain conditions and actions. Conditions that describe the window and how it should be detected and matched and actions that allow various actions to be taken such as minimizing, moving, relocating, moving it to a different screen, offsetting the position, maximizing it to a certain screen, etc. There are three types of layouts:

* Normal Layouts: these contain window definitions where the entire layout can be applied to a current desktop.
* Individual Window Layouts: these contain window definitions that can be applied individually through an active window context popup menu.
* Live Layouts: these are layouts where the system is monitored and when windows that match any or all definitions it will apply the actions to that window as it becomes available and gets noticed.

A Popup Hotkey allows for a popup menu to appear over the active window that offers the matching layout options that are available within the layouts managed by the Window Layout Manager. A way to quickly position windows individually without using an individual window hotkey or entire layout.

The layout editor allows for adding, editing, copying, removing, and capturing windows. And copying window definitions between layouts (to make life easy and avoid having to create duplicate definitions in different layouts or to grab a predefined definition in the repository for easy editing).

Capturing is the process whereby the entire layout is populated by all the windows that can be found on the desktop and running on the system based on the detection options (a.k.a. the Window Filter that can be overridden and specific for any layout). If I’ve moved a bunch of windows in the positions that I’m most comfortable with and wish to preserve as a layout I just hit capture and that is sufficient for all the basic tasks. I can then always edit each individual window when I see fit.

The criteria for a window definition consist of a few basics such as matching a definition to window based on the title (or partial title by wildcard or full Regex – that’s regular expressions for those who don’t know what that means). Same for the process name, process filename, and the window class name. Advanced matching includes whether a window is minimized, maximized, a main window, whether it is on a specific screen, or within a region.

When all the chosen criteria are matched against a window one or more actions can be applied. These include minimizing, maximizing, restoring, moving windows to fixed positions, sizing windows, relocating to a screen, making a window on top or sending it to the background, or any combination of these. Again, all options are handled by exclusivity so if the action is “minimize” it won’t allow you to also reposition and scale it because that would be pointless.

A Match function allows for a quick matching test against the windows on the desktop while the Test function allows for a quick test of the actions. A Find option is included to locate specific windows through the Window Locator.

Something that is not part of the main UI but worth telling about is the peer to peer network feature. When enabled it allows all the WiLMA’s on the network to find eachother and allows one machine to apply layouts of another system either locally or remotely. This was a quick hack I added in order to satisfy my own sense of “lazy but efficient” and while it works great it’s really meant for a single-user scenario since it doesn’t have any features for authentication and security.

Because it is easy to lose track of hotkeys and layouts and individual windows there’s a quick overview for all the hotkeys used by the layouts and windows.

• Screenshots and Downloads of Window Layout Manager (when you open the page, scroll to the end of it, to find the download link)

Tags: Arrange windows, context popup menu, desktop, layout editor, layout manager, layout options, Manage, Organize, wilma, Window Layout Manager, window layouts

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