Snap Layouts and FancyZones: what they remember

Windows 10 & 11 · Updated August 2026

This page is on the website of a paid tool, so here is the conclusion first: for a great many people FancyZones is enough, it is free, and it is the thing to try before spending anything. The distinction that matters is zones versus layouts — and once you see it, which side of the line you are on is obvious.

Snap Layouts and Snap Groups

Built into Windows 11. Hover the maximize button or press Win + Z, pick one of the offered arrangements, and the window fills that region. Fill the remaining regions and Windows forms a Snap Group: hover any of those windows on the taskbar and the whole set comes back to the foreground together.

What it remembers: the grouping of windows you snapped, for as long as those windows exist.

What it doesn't: anything past their lifetime. Close a window and the group dissolves. Restart and it is gone. Groups can't be named, can't be listed, and there is no way to ask for a particular one — Windows forms them implicitly.

FancyZones

Part of Microsoft PowerToys, free and open source. You define your own zone layouts — any grid, any proportions, overlapping if you like — per monitor and per virtual desktop. Hold Shift while dragging a window and the zones appear; drop it in one and it fills it.

It is considerably more capable than most people who have installed it realise. Worth turning on in its settings:

Move newly created windows to their last known zone. FancyZones keeps a per-application record of which zone that app was last dropped into, and puts new windows of that app back there — including after a restart.
Keep windows in their zones when the screen resolution changes. Because a window's home is recorded as a zone rather than as coordinates, a resolution change can be handled by recomputing the zone instead of guessing at pixels.
Override Windows Snap so that Win + arrow moves windows between your zones rather than Windows' own halves.

What it remembers: your zone layouts, and which zone each application belongs in.

What it doesn't: which particular windows were open, or what was in them. Its memory is per application, so three Explorer windows in three different zones is not something it can express. It also never opens anything — every window it arranges must already exist.

Zones versus layouts

That last point is the whole distinction, and it is not a criticism of either tool. They are answering a different question.

A zone tool answers where may windows go? It defines regions and helps you drop things into them quickly. The arrangement is something you perform, faster than by hand, but you perform it each time.

A layout tool answers what was on screen, and where? It records a specific set of windows — these documents, this project, this browser window — in specific places, and reproduces the situation on demand.

If your day is "I want this window to take the left two-thirds", zones are the right answer and you are done. If it is "I want Monday morning back — the same six programs, the same screens, the same sizes", zones will not get you there however good they are, because the thing you want restored was never recorded.

Side by side

	Snap Layouts	FancyZones	Remember window locations	DeskScene
Custom regions	Preset only	Yes	—	Uses actual positions
Named arrangements	No	No	No	Yes
Several to choose from	No	Layouts, not arrangements	One per configuration	Yes
Survives a restart	No	Per app	Yes	Yes
Tells windows apart	—	Per application	—	Per window
Acts on monitor change	No	Resolution changes	Yes	Yes
Opens missing apps	No	No	No	Yes
Global hotkeys	Win + Z	Yes	—	Yes
Price	Free	Free	Free	€9.99 once

They are not alternatives

These run together without conflict, and the combination is better than either alone. Use zones to arrange a window exactly how you want it, then save that arrangement as a layout so you never have to arrange it again.

So which do you need?

FancyZones is enough if you mostly work with the same few applications, one window each, and what you want is to place them quickly on a screen that doesn't change much. It costs nothing and it is very good.

The built-in setting is enough if your layout is fine and the only thing that ruins it is a monitor sleeping or a dock coming off. Turn it on and stop reading — that page is here.

You want named layouts if you switch between distinct modes of work, if you keep several windows of the same application apart, or if getting started means opening the same programs before you can arrange them.

Which is where DeskScene comes in

It saves the windows you have open — position, size, monitor, maximized state — as a named profile, and restores the whole arrangement with one click, a global hotkey, or automatically when your monitor setup changes. Windows are matched individually rather than by application, so several windows of the same program keep their own places.

Everything stays on your PC as plain JSON. No account, no telemetry.

See the full comparison Free seven-day trial, then €9.99 once. No subscription.

And the honest edges: Store (UWP) apps can't be captured, windows running as administrator can't be moved by a normal program, and window matching is a heuristic rather than a guarantee. FancyZones lives with the same first two — they are Windows rules.