Why Windows May Open Automatically When You Launch An App Or Restart Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Are you wondering why when you restart your Mac or when you launch an app a bunch of windows open. Shouldn't it just start off fresh? Let's take a look.

Let's say you go to launch an app, like Pages or Safari. When you do a bunch of windows open. Why do these windows open? Why didn't it just start off fresh asking you to open a new document or go to a new webpage? The same thing can happen when you restart your Mac or start it off after it's shut down. You may find that a bunch of apps open up with a bunch of windows. So what's going on here? 

So here I'm going to launch Safari. When I do instead of starting off fresh and asking me to go to a page, two webpages already open in two separate windows. When I go to Pages here that opens up the app and two windows open for that as well. So what's happened here is that I simply had these windows open when I previously Quit these apps. You can see here if I Quit Pages with these two windows open and I Quit Safari with those two windows open that those windows will open again when I relaunch those apps. They are simply resuming where they left off. 

Now there's a setting for this in System Settings and then you go to Desktop & Dock. You're going to scroll down a bit and you're going to look for, under Windows, Close Windows when quitting an application. If you turn that On quitting an application using the Menu with the app name and choosing Quit of simply Command Q will not just quit the app but also close the windows. In this case those two Pages's windows. So when I have this turned On here, if I quit Pages and then I relaunch Pages, those windows won't open. I'll just be prompted to open a new document. 

However you should know there are other ways to accomplish the same thing. Even if you have this turned Off here you can simply Close these windows before quitting the app. So clicking the Red button here at the top left corner of this window and then the one on the top left corner of this window, or choosing File, and then Close Window, Command W is the keyboard shortcut usually. There's also a way to Close All Windows. So you can close the windows to clean up the app so that when you launch it again it will open with no windows. 

There's an easier way to do this all at once. You go to the Menu with the App's name, in this case Safari, and you go to Quit, if you hold the Option Key down on your keyboard you'll see it changes to Quit and Close All Windows. Or you could have just used the keyboard shortcut, Option Command Q instead of Command Q. That would close both those windows and Quit the app. So when you launch Safari again it launches with no open windows. Like I'll try it here and now you can see if I launch Safari it will bring up a blank window with My Start Page instead of the ones I previously had open. 

Now note that if you go into System Settings and changed that setting I showed you before, so turn On Close Windows When Quitting an Application, then when you go to an app, like I'll go back here to Pages and I'll open up those two documents again. If I go to the apps menu here and go down to Quit if I hold the Option Key down now instead of saying Quit Pages and Close Windows, it does the opposite. It says Quit and Keep Windows. So, the Option Key will toggle to the opposite behavior of whatever you have in System Settings. So System Settings should be your default preference. Then you can use Option Command Q instead of Command Q  to reverse that in a specific case. 

Okay, so now you know why windows reappear when you launch an app and how to change that as the default or on a case-by-case basis. But what about when you restart your Mac or shut it down and then start it up again. There's a separate setting for that. So, of course, I can't screen record over a restart. But I don't need to, to show you the setting. So when I go to the Apple Menu here and then choose Restart I'm given this Confirmation Dialogue. There's a setting right here, a checkbox for Reopen Windows when logging in. So with that checked you're going to get the same behavior. As a matter of fact it is going to override the other setting. So if you have apps that are currently running, when you Restart those apps will come back and those windows will come back as well. The same thing when you go to shutdown you'll see the checkbox there too. You'll also get the same thing when you go to Logout of a User Account. You see the same checkbox. 

If you find these videos valuable consider joining the more than 3000 others that support MacMost through Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com/patreon. 

Now if you want to set a default for this you can. In fact the checkbox is its own default setting. If you set it, even if you cancel, the setting is remembered. So I just turned it Off here and if I cancel you'll see next time I go to Restart, Shutdown, or Logout, it remembers whether or not it was checked. So, just change it to be what you want and that's the default. But then you can always change it the next time in case you want something different. 

Now there are few catches here. The first is, a third party app doesn't necessarily have to follow this. A third party app can be designed to start each time without the previous window showing up. So it all depends on what that developer wants to do. But a well designed one probably should, especially if it's handling documents like a word processor or views like a web browser. Also, the Finder is kind of an odd exception. The Finder is an app, but it doesn't really have a way to Quit. You don't Quit the Finder, although you can force it to restart. It appears that Finder Windows will always come back. Of course, you wouldn't be quitting Finder while you're working on your Mac. But when you Restart or Shutdown and start again or logout, it seems that Finder Windows will come back no matter which way the box is checked. 

So I hope that explains a little bit about how your Mac works when Restarting an app or Restarting your Mac and helps you set it like you want. Thanks for watching.