nancyfree
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: menubar on external monitor

The menubar does not appear on the external monitor, the dock does

MacBook Air (13-inch Late 2010), OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on May 24, 2014 4:51 AM

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nancyfree

Q: menubar on external monitor

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  • by joe_73,

    joe_73 May 26, 2014 7:39 AM in response to nancyfree
    Level 3 (700 points)
    May 26, 2014 7:39 AM in response to nancyfree

    Hi nancyfree,

     

    Welcome to the Apple Support Communities! I understand you have multiple displays set up using Mavericks and you can see the dock on both displays but not the menu bar. In Mavericks you should be able to see the menu bar on both displays. Is it possible that the second display has an application running in full screen mode that is hiding the menu bar? It doesn’t sound like a resolution issue because you are able to see the dock as expected. Please refer to the following article for additional information.

     

    OS X: Using multiple displays in Mavericks

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5891

     

    I hope this helps,  

    -Joe

  • by nancyfree,

    nancyfree nancyfree May 26, 2014 4:39 PM in response to joe_73
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 26, 2014 4:39 PM in response to joe_73

    Hi joe_73,

    No application is running in full screen mode. The only way to have the menubar appear on the external monitor is to bring its resolution down from 1920X1080 to 1600X900. Of course the monitor is less crisp and legible. Its as if the menubar was off the top of the screen.

    Does that help to understand the issue for some pointers?

    Thank you,

    Nancyfree

  • by dianeoforegon,

    dianeoforegon dianeoforegon May 26, 2014 6:44 PM in response to nancyfree
    Level 5 (5,753 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 26, 2014 6:44 PM in response to nancyfree

    Do you have mirroring selected?

     

    Mirroring means that both your internal display and the external display will have the same image (mirrored!), consequently, both will show the same resolution.

     

    The actual resolution is determined by the external display.

     

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5891

    http://www.macworld.com/article/2042936/hands-on-with-os-x-mavericks-multiple-di splay-support.html

    http://support.apple.com/kb/PH13814

     

     

    Dock

     

    There’s still only one Dock, ever. If you set your Dock to display on the left or the right, it will appear on the leftmost (or rightmost) display and stay there forever.

     

    If you set the Dock to display on the bottom, however, something strange happens. The Dock follows you around. Move your cursor to an external display . The Dock remains where it was, on the first display. However, if you move your cursor to the bottom of the display (as if trying to summon a hidden Dock), the Dock slides out of view on my first display and slides back into view on the second. If your Dock is set to auto-hide, it may end up seeming seamless.

     

    No Dock??

    Did you change the Mission Control setting to not allow Displays have separate spaces?

    That will disable the menu bar and Dock moving behavior as it is not compatible with an extended desktop.

     

    Menu bar

     

    With Mavericks, though, each display can have its own menu bar. As I type this, I’m looking at a BBEdit menu bar on my laptop display and a Maps menu bar on an HDTV across the room. The currently active app’s menu bar looks like you’d expect it to look; the inactive app’s menu bar is much less opaque. When you switch displays or click on the currently inactive menu bar, their transparency (or lack thereof) swaps.