Déjà Vu

A GNOME Shell extension that saves and restores your window layout — position, size, monitor, and workspace — for each open window. Useful for people, like me, who organise their screen in a structured way by dedicating a specific space to each app.

Features

• Save / Restore Layout — snapshot the current arrangement of windows, or restore the last one saved.
• Default Layout — keep a second, separate layout (e.g. your usual daily setup) that auto-save never overwrites. Save, restore, or hand-edit it independently from the regular layout.
• Auto-save — saves the current layout in the background every 5 minutes. Can be turned off from the menu.
• Auto-restore after suspend — restores the last saved layout automatically when the system resumes.
• Regex title matching — match a window for restoration by a pattern instead of an exact title, so a window whose title changes (browser tab, open file) still gets restored.
• Runs entirely locally: no telemetry, no network access.

Installation

Not published on extensions.gnome.org — install manually from a clone of this repository:

./install.sh

This copies the extension to ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/deja-vu@JuGuSm/ and enables it. To install system-wide instead:

sudo ./install.sh --system

After installing or updating, reload GNOME Shell to pick up the change:

• X11: Alt+F2, type r, press Enter — restarts GNOME Shell in place.
• Wayland: GNOME Shell can't restart in place; log out and back in.

Usage

Click the panel icon (top bar) to open the menu:

Menu item	Action
Save Current Layout	Snapshot the layout of all currently open windows.
Restore Last Layout	Restore the most recently saved layout.
Save Current Layout as Default	Snapshot the current layout into a separate "default" layout.
Restore Default Layout	Restore from the default layout instead of the regular one.
Save Automatically (5m)	Toggle background auto-save every 5 minutes.
Restore Automatically (after suspend)	Toggle auto-restore of the last layout right after resume.
Edit Last Layout	Open the regular layout's JSON file in your system's text editor.
Edit Default Layout	Open the default layout's JSON file in your system's text editor.

Layouts are stored as JSON under ~/.config/deja-vu/:

• layout.json — the regular layout (written by "Save Current Layout" and auto-save).
• layout_default.json — the default layout (written by "Save Current Layout as Default").
• settings.json — the two toggle states above.

Each entry in a layout file looks like:

{
  "title": "Firefox — Mozilla Firefox",
  "wm_class": "firefox",
  "workspace": 0,
  "monitor": 0,
  "x": 0,
  "y": 32,
  "width": 1920,
  "height": 1048
}

Matching windows on restore

When restoring, each saved entry is matched against currently open windows by wm_class and title. By default title must match exactly.

Prefix title with re: to match by regular expression instead — useful when a window's title changes (a browser tab, an open file name):

{ "title": "re:^Firefox", "wm_class": "firefox", "workspace": 0, "monitor": 0, "x": 0, "y": 0, "width": 1280, "height": 800 }

title value	Behavior
"Firefox — Mozilla Firefox"	Exact match only (default)
"re:^Firefox"	Matches any title starting with "Firefox"
"re:.*\\.txt — gedit"	Matches any .txt file open in gedit, regardless of filename

An invalid pattern after re: is logged and that entry is skipped — it won't crash the extension, it just won't restore that window.

D-Bus interface

Exported at /org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/DejaVu, interface org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.DejaVu:

gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell \
  --object-path /org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/DejaVu \
  --method org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.DejaVu.<method>

Available methods:

• ListWindows
• SaveLayout
• RestoreLayout
• SaveDefaultLayout
• RestoreDefaultLayout.

Project layout

extension.js          Entry point: D-Bus interface, auto-save timer, settings toggles
modules/windows.js    Collects/matches/restores window state (title, position, workspace, monitor)
modules/storage.js    Reads/writes layout.json, layout_default.json and settings.json
modules/suspend.js    Listens for system resume via login1's D-Bus PrepareForSleep signal
modules/ui.js         Panel button and menu
icons/                Menu and panel icons
icon.png              Listing icon (gnome-extensions / extensions.gnome.org convention)

Development

./install.sh         # install locally and enable
./pack.sh            # build a distributable zip in dist/
./release.sh         # tag a release from metadata.json's version

Credits

Originally based on lukastymo/save-my-windows, since archived by its author. Déjà Vu continues from that codebase under its own name, with its own feature set and maintenance.

License

GNU General Public License v3 (GPL-3.0-or-later) — see LICENSE.