Restart apps in proper space?

Making apps auto start at power on/reboot is easily done by adding them to the Login Items section of the System Preferences Accounts. But, they all pile up in the first space.

Anybody know how to specify a particular space when they are autostarted? From googling, it appears that it is possible with Applescript (which is a really weird scripting language), but so far I haven't figured it out.

Works for me

I have a third party calendar app that loads at startup. In my Expose and Spaces pane in System Prefs, I have that app set to Space 3 and it always appears there.

Are you saying that your apps are set in Spaces, but on startup, they don't "obey"?

toMACsh said:

I have a third party calendar app that loads at startup. In my Expose and Spaces pane in System Prefs, I have that app set to Space 3 and it always appears there.

Are you saying that your apps are set in Spaces, but on startup, they don't "obey"?

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Yes. For instance, I usually put Adium in the upper right Space, and Mail in the lower right with Opera in the middle upper. (I have 9 spaces).

I have them autostart using the Login Items section and they restart on boot just fine, but they always all wind up in the upper left default Space on top of one another.

So what u are saying is that if u set it up as shown here, on starting up this app would show in space 1;


Click for full size

Well, that's weird. Since there isn't a specific plist file for Spaces, I suppose you're left with trying to "repair" or "rebuild" the one for System Preferences. And, you could always test Spaces and Login Items in another user account. Short of reinstalling the OS, I'm not sure what else to try.

Collin Bl said:

So what u are saying is that if u set it up as shown here, on starting up this app would show in space 1;

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Yes. No matter what I set up, all apps start up in space 1 (on reboot).

However, some more info. I tried it on a friend's laptop, running Leopard, and it worked like it is supposed to. Set up the applications in System Preferences/Spaces and they restart where they were told to.

So, it is a problem with my factory installed Snow Leopard. Which is only a month old and hasn't been tinkered with by me (OS wise) in any way, except to download updates a couple of times.

Hmmmm

toMACsh said:

... you're left with trying to "repair" or "rebuild" the (plist file) for System Preferences. And, you could always test Spaces and Login Items in another user account.

Click to expand...

Did that make sense?

toMACsh said:

Did that make sense?

Click to expand...

Great shot! That was it, although I had to do some fairly heavy grepping to find it. Googling aways placed it in some other subdirectory, so apparently it moved with 10.6.

FYI, it is in the Library/preferences/com.apple.dock.plist file. I deleted the workspaces-app-bindings row then logged out. When I logged in it recreated the row and it is now working.

Now as to what happened to create the problem - who knows?

Thanks

cptkrf said:

Thanks

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You're welcome, but are probably giving me too much credit. (a little "credit" is fine) I'm actually surprised that it was the Dock's plist file that was hosed. Why does that have anything to do with Spaces? Oh well.