Visual Studio has four window layout states:
Design view. What you see when you launch Visual Studio and start coding.
Full screen. Toggled by Shift+Alt+Enter in the General Development Settings. You can also go to the View menu and click Full Screen. The command is View.FullScreen.
Debugging view. Used when debugging.
File view. Used when you open a file via the command line as follows: devenv.exe myfile.txt. You’ll notice that the environment will have no tool windows showing.
When you shut down Visual Studio in any state, all four states are saved. This includes saving both your tool window layouts and your command bar customizations across all four states. Additionally, all four states are saved when you go to the Tools–Import And Export Settings dialog box and perform an Export of just the Window Layouts category.
You can save all four window layout states at any time by going to the Tools–Import And Export Settings dialog box and choosing the Export option. On the Export page, check the General Settings box and then check the Window Layouts category.
You can quickly toggle into Full Screen mode from any of the other three window layouts by pressing Shift+Alt+Enter.
Any window customizations you make in Full Screen mode persist across different window layouts (meaning when you are in design mode and go back to Full Screen mode, you’ll see the tool windows where you last had them in Full Screen mode) and across different Visual Studio instances (where you close and reopen the IDE).
You can enter the file window layout mode only by opening a file from a command prompt.
Invoking program.cs from the command prompt opens Visual Studio in this file window layout. You’ll note in the following image that there are no tool windows showing and the Text Editor toolbar is showing. This is the default view in the General Development Settings.
You can make any customizations here and they’ll persist across window layout states. (This means that if you open a project, all the tool windows will pop back. This happens because you’re now in design mode.) Your customizations will be persisted across sessions. Whenever you shut down Visual Studio, these customizations are saved to disk. They are also saved as a part of your .vssettings file (Tools–Import And Export Settings).
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