The most recognizable effect of using a session manager is the possibility of logging out from an interactive session and then finding exactly the same windows in the same state when logging in again. For this to work, the session manager program stores the names of applications that are running at logout and starts them again at login. Moreover, for the state of the applications to be restored as well (which is needed to restore the content of windows), the applications must be able to save their state of execution upon request from the session manager and load it back when started again.