Question

I often have my emacs split into about 4 windows so I can look at a bunch of buffers at the same time, however I’d like to be able to C-x 1 (make the window the same size as emacs) and then somehow restore back to my nice 4 window layout I was just looking at.

Is there an easy way to do this or do I need some elisp / lisp (note: I don’t know ANY elisp.)

Answer 1

Try winner-mode.

With winner-mode enabled, you can restore your previous window configuration with C-c<left>.

You can type it repeatedly to step back through the window configuration history, so you’re safe even when there have been multiple intervening changes.

C-c<right> returns you (directly) to the most recent configuration.