how to prevent dock/menu bar from appearing in fullscreen mode with recent update to SONOMA 14.5

In settings which need more scrutiny by new users look for "Automatically hide and show the Dock" in Desktop & Dock.

The Dock is supposed to appear when you bump against the edge of the screen.

One simple thing you could consider is to move the Dock to one of the sides.

I go further than that: there is a delay you can set before the Dock appears.

I have it set to 5 seconds, so bumping occasionally against the edge (mine is on the right) does not automatically make the Dock appear.

You can run this command in Terminal:

  defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay 5

In case you quickly want the Dock to appear/disappear, you can press the shortcut Command-Option-D, if you have that activated in System Settings->Keyboard->Keyboard Shortcuts->Launchpad & Dock

Do you mean the Menu bar (which is at the top of the screen) AND the Dock (at the bottom by default) or are you using "menu bar" as another name for "Dock"?

To change the settings for the Dock, go to System Settings>Desktop & Dock. If you enable "Automatically hide and show the Dock" it will only appear if you move the cursor to the bottom of the screen. If you turn that feature off, the dock will stay on the screen all the time.

I find that it's helpful to set the Dock Size to close to the smallest option and Magnification at close to the largest.

TheAshleyJ wrote:

Thank you, The issue is that when I get close to bottom of the screen, not all the way, but close, it pops up. So even when the "automatically hide..." it still pops up because of low enough to the bottom. I like to leave all my windows in full screen, so one second I'll be trying to write a message on messages and the next moment the dock appears and I either can't type where I was trying to or it launches something accidentally.

I tried having it on the right for a few weeks but I coudn't get used it.

Try making it smaller. Perhaps for you, turning both size and magnification to small would help. Also, Luis Sequiera1's excellent suggestion to change the timing might help.

It sometimes takes longer than we might like to retrain our muscle memory, so you might need more time to adjust to having the dock on the side if you decide to go that route.

TheAshleyJ wrote:

Thank you! I made it as small as possible, I'm going to see how that goes and then I'll consider moving it to the side again and see if I can get used to it.

Hopefully, between making it smaller and making it take longer to open, you won't have as much of a problem.