Alt+Space: the window menu that rescues a lost window

Has a window “run off” to a disconnected monitor? This mostly happens to people who regularly switch a laptop between home and office setups with an external display — an app remembers being positioned where the second monitor used to be, and once it's unplugged, the window shows up only as a sliver at the edge of the screen, or entirely off it. You don't need to restart the app or close and reopen the program to fix it.

A typical scenario

Petr, a consultant, normally works with his laptop connected to an external monitor, where he has a spreadsheet open. One day he heads to a meeting without the monitor, opens the same spreadsheet on the laptop, and the window opens exactly where it was last positioned — outside the visible area of the laptop's smaller display. He sees only a sliver of the window, or nothing at all, and dragging with the mouse doesn't work, because the window's title bar, which he'd need to drag, isn't visible at all.

Pressing Alt + Space opens the system window menu regardless of where the window actually sits, and via the Move option he gets the window back onto the visible screen within a few seconds, with nothing to restart and not a single line of his half-finished spreadsheet lost.

How to do it

1. First activate the lost window — by clicking its icon on the taskbar, or by switching to it with Alt + Tab, even if you can't see it on screen.
2. Press Alt + Space — a small system window menu opens, even though the window itself is outside the visible area of the screen.
3. In the menu, choose Move (or press M, the underlined letter that serves as the option's keyboard shortcut).
4. Tap any arrow key on the keyboard — this activates move mode — then move the mouse; the window “sticks” to the cursor and follows its movement.
5. Once the window is visible on screen where you want it, click the mouse — the window drops into place there and the move is complete.

The best tools

• The built-in system window menu (Alt + Space) — works on any app in Windows, regardless of whether the window is currently visible or not.
• PowerToys — FancyZones — for preventing situations like this ahead of time, with a predefined window layout that's easy to restore after reconnecting monitors.
• The Win + Shift + arrow shortcut — moves the active (visible) window to an adjacent monitor, useful in situations where you can see the window, it's just on the wrong screen.
• Display settings (Settings → System → Display) — after unplugging a monitor, check that Windows correctly picked up the new screen layout, which helps prevent windows from getting lost like this in the first place.

What you get out of it

• Time: instead of restarting the app and losing unsaved work, you get the window back within a few seconds.
• Preserved work in progress: unlike closing and reopening the app, the window's contents stay unchanged — nothing gets lost.
• Peace of mind with multiple monitors: you know that even if a window “disappears,” there's a fast, reliable way to find it.
• A universal fix: works the same way on any app in Windows, no need to look up a separate procedure for every program.

Pro tip

If windows keep getting lost after unplugging the same monitor, try remembering Win + Shift + arrow as a faster alternative for windows that are visible but just poorly positioned — save Alt + Space as the rescue tool for windows you can't see at all.