I found layout saving cumbersome in i3, mostly because of the manual editing you would sometimes have to do to the JSON file[1]. I have used it a few times, and didn't run into many of the common problems, but there have been many layout related questions/problems on the i3 subreddit.

I wonder if because people had so many problems with it the developer chose to skip over it due to lack of demand. Surely there's a better way to implement it, but that way may break compatibility with i3. This is all speculation of course.

[1] https://i3wm.org/docs/layout-saving.html#_restoring_a_vertic...

I think the primary use for layouts is for people that want complicated layouts of windows at startup that would be cumbersome to set up every time you log in.

I think in practice with as many workplaces as you like the most productive layouts on medium to small screens, which is to say most of them, is a number of workspaces each with a relatively simple layout and 1-3 windows only.

You can wrap the layout saving restoring functionality in a tiny bit of scripting to make it more useful on the fly. Basically the json isn't useful right from the rip because you have to manually uncomment whatever fields make a given window unique but a script can pretty much do that unless it requires a regex and window title to distinguish between 2 windows.