Workspaces does not retain application order

[funky-d]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.86.0

Installation method

GitHub

Running as admin

No

Area(s) with issue?

Workspaces

Steps to reproduce

Starting in the 0.86.0 update, Workspaces no longer opens applications in the correct order. To replicate:

1. Open the same application multiple times with different files
2. Capture the workspace, and specify the command line arguments to open the correct file for each instance of the application if necessary
3. Close all files and launch the workspace. The files do not open in the order specified in the workspace

✔️ Expected Behavior

In version 0.85.1 and prior, the applications launched in the order they are shown in the workspace edit section (1 opens first, 2 second, etc). When there are multiple instances of a single application, this affects the order in which the files appear on the taskbar when hovering over the app.

❌ Actual Behavior

Workspaces does not respect the order in which the apps are listed in the edit workspace section, at least when a single app is open multiple times with a different file specified for each instance of the app. I did not test with multiple apps. Reverting back to 0.85.1 and the apps are opened in the correct order.

Other Software

No response

[similar-issues-ai]

We've found some similar issues:

• [Workspaces] Taskbar Icon Order Not Preserved #34613 , similarity score: 83%

If any of the above are duplicates, please consider closing this issue out and adding additional context in the original issue.

Note: You can give me feedback by 👍 or 👎 this comment.

[plante-msft]

@funky-d did the app order in the dialogue modal that pops up on launch also change? In theory we haven't made direct changes here though we've fixed some issues related to CLI arguments not being applied to the correct app instance (if multiple were present).

/needinfo

Technically workspaces only can impact the order in which we make the launch call but adding better launch ordering support and a Z-gripper control to the editor so that users can easily change order is something to look into.

[funky-d]

@plante-msft apologies for my delayed response. The dialogue modal only shows the application name, not the CLI arguments that would reflect what file is being opened. Consider the following test:

1. Create six text documents, named 1.txt through 6.txt.
2. Open the documents in order in Notepad.
3. Create a workspace, with a command line option for the file location of each document in order 1-6.
4. When closing all documents and launching the workspace, they open in a different order than reflected in the workspace.

I tested the above with two different workspaces, and each instance opened the text documents in different orders than were specified by the command line option for each document.

Thank you for your response, and I hope this information is helpful!