One of the most annoying things that can happen when you are hard at work on something is to get distracted. When you come back to your work, you have to pick up where you left off and that usually means loosing a significant amount of time until you are back on track. Similarly, when working on something with your computer, a power failure or crash means looting precious time getting back into the work environment. After all, you had certain applications opened, in a certain order, you were working on this and that document, and - after a restart - all that information is usually forgotten and you launch the programs, because and when you need them. Fortunately, there is software that lets us get back into the work environment with just the push of a button, like Relaunch.

What it does

Relaunch is a simple utility that will remember the state of your computer in terms of what programs were running, and let you save and restore that state as you see fit. This allows you to get back to work quicker than normal after interruptions - such as crashes and power failures - as well as make it easier to perform certain operations, like restart after installing system updates, without having to lose too much of your precious time.

Working with it

Working with Relaunch could not be easier. Unfortunately, it is so simple, it goes beyond and becomes simplistic.

The program works with snapshots of your currently running applications. When you first run the applications, it will automatically place itself in the Login Items, so that the next time you start up your computer, it can restore all your applications. However, if there is no snapshot, there is nothing to restore, so the program needs to be told you want to remember the current setup. This is done by choosing ‘Take Snapshot’ from the Relaunch menu. Once you have taken a snapshot, you can have it restored automatically when you next start up, or manually, by selecting ‘Launch Snapshot’ from the menu. Other than these options, you can also choose to clear the snapshot from the same menu.

More work

While the system the application currently uses does the job, it does not really do it in the best of ways. Sure, you can have everything restored, but you need to manually take a snapshot before hand. This makes it pretty useless in situations where you have a serious crash or a power failure. The rest of the time, you need to remember to take the snapshot itself.

Of course, it can be argued that you can just take the snapshot once, and be done with it, but that is not really the case for most users. If you use your computer for only one thing, then you are satisfied with the way things currently are. However, if you use it for different tasks, each requiring a certain set of applications, then things get complicated.
Ideally, the program should let you take several snapshots, and let you name and organize them; that way you can have one for every task. This would also make it very practical when changing from working on one thing to working on another.

Another option would be to intelligently handle the turning off of the computer. Imagine having a Restart, Log Off and Shutdown option in the Relaunch menu, and every time you use them, it automatically takes the snapshot that is needed for restoring when you come back. That would be so much better, instead of having to remember doing it by hand.

Another thing is the unexpected shutdown, such as that caused by forced restart or power failure. The Mac can tell when that happens, there is an option in the Energy Saver preference pane that you can set and will automatically turn the machine back on after a power failure. Why not have an option that takes a snapshot automatically every time a process is launched or terminated and have it automatically restored if there was a power hiccup.

Borderline functionality

As it currently is, Relaunch is only handy if you only do one thing on the computer and only need one snapshot. For anybody else it requires remembering to take a snapshot every time before you restart or shutdown the computer, which amounts to more work, and will take quite a bit of time to become ingrained.

The Good

Useful in getting back to work with the minimum wasted time. All your programs are restored and you are good to go.

The Bad

Not that flexible and a real solution only for those that do not do many things on their computers.

The Truth

This program could have been great; the need for something like this is obvious for those who make heavy use of their computers. Unfortunately, it has an overly simple approach that could benefit greatly from increased flexibly, before it will be really worth using.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge: