OS X Catalina - Dock has disappeared

I installed macOS Catalina (version 10.15) on an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017). Some time after an otherwise uneventful installation, I noticed the Dock had disappeared. A reboot did not help. In System Preferences, in Dock, the checkbox "Automatically hide and show the Dock" had been checked on, which was not my original preference. Unchecking the box did not help. Moving the Size slider made the Dock appear as the slider moved, but when I let go of the slider, the checkbox would check automatically itself back on.

FYI, I'm only using the single built-in monitor that is part of my iMac.

Yes this works. But is hardly a solution. The dock should just be there without moving to mission control. The checking/unchecking of hide/disappear in system preferences doesn't work. This must be a bug. Hopefully solved soon. (MacBook Air 2017)

Yes, I lost my dock this morning, yesterday it was all the items and data on my desktop, day before it was all my usernames and passwords. Right now it will only run (if you want to call it that) in Safe Mode to be able to use the dock. Apple has not been much help.

I'm also having the same problem. Multiple monitors and eGPU. I also notice that when the doc disappears, notification centre also stops working (I can't access it by using the two finger swipe from the right).

Typically a reboot, not connected to monitors solves this, but I've done this a few times and still no luck. Hope Apple comes up with some fixes in this area soon!!

The same thing happened to me but after I monkeyed around with changing the size of of the dock in the settings and then gave up, shut down my machine for the night and when I logged in the next day, like magic, the dock was mysteriously back.

Not Solved.

For me at least. I still have this problem on my 2017 iMac running Catalina.

Every time I restart the dock disappear. If I run the terminal command below to reset the dock it works fine. But then disappears again after a restart.

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false; killall Dock

The problem is that after dock reset, it appears in its default setup with all the Apple apps etc.

Not the setup I prefer.

I have opened System Preferences and just clicked on each logo in turn and redone my Preferences. If you have tried the Show/Hide option there and it hasn't worked then I can't advise.

Yes I am experiencing exactly the same problem. I reinstalled the new OS and it came back, but this morning after a reboot it is gone again.

Thank you, that worked for me once I rebooted

Restart with Option+Command+D pressed.

Several replies above have suggested answers to fixing the dock disappearing. Scroll up and you’ll see them. The deletion of a .plist string seems to work for 99% of people including myself.

Friend Sorry but the disappearing Dock is a Catalina bug and yes there are several ways it get the dock back but they aint permanent. We have to wait for Apple to fix it..........

Wasn't this fixed in 10.15.1? I have not had a recurrence since that update.

I'm having the same problem but on my 2012 Macbook Pro. I followed a guide earlier today to fix the issue and it did fix it until I had to shut my computer down again. My dock shows up in launchpad but it doesn't show up on my desktop.

I'm using a MacBook with Catalina 10.15: I just restarted and now the dock will not show up when I drop my cursor to the bottom pane. Under System Preferences, I have:

Magnification: checked

All the box stacked up under that: checked