I have a pretty standard jqGrid using free-jqGrid 4.13 with loadonce: true; 
What I want to do is something I came across a couple of times:
 I want to save the state of the grid (without the data);
that means the settings (number of current page for example), filters the user applied and also the text in the filter-toolbar.
and then load and apply this data to the grid later.
jqGrid is such a powerful tool, but stuff like this seems such a pain to accomplish.
after hours and hours of work i came up with a complicated solution; it is working, but it's not a nice solution imho:
1) saving jqGrid filter-data (locally):
// in this example i am using the "window unload" event,
// because i want the filters to be saved once you leave the page:
$(window).on("unload", function(){
    // i have to access the colModel in order to get the names of my columns
    // which i need to get the values of the filter-toolbar textboxes later:
    var col_arr = $("#list").jqGrid("getGridParam", "colModel");
    // my own array to save the toolbar data:
    var toolbar_search_array = [];
    for(var i = 0, max = col_arr.length; i < max; i++)
    {
        // only saving the data when colModel's "search" is set to true
        // and value of the filterToolbar textbox  got a length
        // the ID of the filterToolbar text-input is "gs_" + colModel.name
        if(col_arr[i].search && $("#gs_" + col_arr[i].name).val().length)
        {
             toolbar_search_array.push({ name: col_arr[i].name, value: $("#gs_" + col_arr[i].name).val() });
        }
    }
    // putting everything into one object
    var pref = {
        // 1. toolbar filter data - used to fill out the text-inputs accordingly
        toolbar :   toolbar_search_array,
        // 2. postData - contains data for the actual filtering 
        post :      $("#list").jqGrid("getGridParam", "postData"),
        // 3. settings - this data is also included in postData - but doesn't get applied 
        // when using 'setGridParam'
        sortname:   $('#list').jqGrid('getGridParam', 'sortname'),
        sortorder:  $('#list').jqGrid('getGridParam', 'sortorder'),
        page:       $('#list').jqGrid('getGridParam', 'page'),
        rowNum:     $('#list').jqGrid('getGridParam', 'rowNum')
    };
    //saving in localStorage
    localStorage.setItem("list",  JSON.stringify( pref ));
});
2) loading and applying jqGrid filter-data:
for use in a document-ready closure, for example
var localsave = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem("list"));
// these settings are also saved in postData, 
// but they don't get applied to the grid when setting the postData:
$('#list').jqGrid('setGridParam', {
    sortname: localsave.sortname,
    sortorder: localsave.sortorder,
    page: localsave.page,
    rowNum: localsave.rowNum
});
// this applies the filtering itself and reloads the grid. 
// it's important that you don't forget the "search : true" part:
$("#list").jqGrid("setGridParam", { 
    search : true,
    postData : localsave.post
}).trigger("reloadGrid");
// this is loading the text into the filterToolbar 
// from the array of objects i created:
console.log(localsave.toolbar);
for(i = 0, max = localsave.toolbar.length; i < max; i++)
{
    $("#gs_" + localsave.toolbar[i].name).val( localsave.toolbar[i].value );
}
it seems strange to me that postData contains all the data necessary but it's impossible to apply this data; at least as far as i know.  
my question(s):
is it really this inconvenient to apply all the filter- and paging-data or am i missing something?
why can't this be as simple as:
// saving:
var my_save = $("#list").jqGrid("getGridParam", "postData");
// loading:
$("#list").jqGrid("setGridParam", { 
    search : true,
    postData : my_save
}).trigger("reloadGrid");
?
thank you for any help and/or suggestions!