When using an external monitor on my MBP, spotlight search is often not visible

Question

Level 1

11 points

When using an external monitor on my MBP, spotlight search is often not visible

I started recently having a weird problem after installing Catalina on my Macbook Pro. Hitting cmd+space for spotlight wasn't working!

At first I thought there was something preventing it from working completely but it did work..sometimes. After more digging I found that what is actually happening as that spotlight is coming up but is not visible when I have an external monitor plugged into my MBP through the HDMI connection.

I verified this by simply doing the following:

Hook up 1080p monitor to HDMI
Press CMD+SPACE for Spotlight and see nothing
Disconnect 1080p monitor from HDMI
Spotlight search window is now visible

Why is spotlight not visible when the external monitor is plugged in and how do I fix this?

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Oct 16, 2019 8:47 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

chuck_norrisrules

Level 1

16 points

Nov 7, 2019 12:25 PM in response to jwvanderbeck

I had this same problem, and was able to fix it by unplugging my external monitor, then using CMD+space to bring up the spotlight search bar I dragged spotlight to the far left side of my built in monitor. After this I was able to plug in the external monitor, spotlight will disappear, but now when I use CMD+space spotlight will appear on my built in screen.

Maybe the problem is with two monitors spotlight doesn't know where to come up, or comes up in the middle between the two monitors so it's not visible, but by dragging it to the left side of your screen spotlight will remember that position and open in that same spot in the future.

Reply

Answer 2

jwvanderbeck Author

Level 1

11 points

Nov 7, 2019 12:43 PM in response to chuck_norrisrules

Huh I didn't even know you could drag that bar around! I will give that a try.

Reply

When using an external monitor on my MBP, spotlight search is often not visible

Similar questions