I have a startupHook that spawns a number of windows on various workspaces. When I restart XMonad, I don't want those windows opened again. Is there an easy way to have startupHook only run when logging in, and not when restarting XMonad? The way I have tried to solve this, unsuccessfully, is to make my startupHook look like this: myStartup = when (noRun /= "1") $ do spawnOn "1" "emacs" spawnOn "6" "x-terminal-emulator" -- and so on... where noRun = unsafePerformIO $ env "NO_STARTUP_HOOK" "0" env :: String -> String -> IO String env variable fallthrough = getEnv variable `Control.Exception.catch` econst fallthrough (where getEnv is imported from System.Environment). And then I have changed the restart keybinding like this: , ("M-S-r", spawn "xmonad --recompile; export NO_STARTUP_HOOK=1; xmonad --restart") Unfortunately it doesn't work - I guess something "more" is going on when "xmonad --restart" runs, because if I add a key: , ("M-S-y", spawn "export HEP=yay; notify-send --expire-time 2000 'Testing' \"ENV: [$HEP]\"") then pressing M-S-y gives me an alert with the text "ENV: [yay]" in it. But if I do: , ("M-S-y", spawn "notify-send --expire-time 2000 'Testing' \"ENV: [$NO_STARTUP_HOOK]\"") the notification says "ENV: []" regardless of whether I have restarted XMonad or not. I have a feeling that I am taking the long walk to solve this - any ideas of the easy way to the goal here? Thanks! Adam -- "Här kommer rädslan, nu igen Adam Sjøgren När alla fjärilar i magen nålas upp asjo@koldfront.dk till ett mönster på min säng"