How can I keep Dock and Menu bar visible and on all my MacBook Pro screens?

Actually, it turns out that you can have the Dock showing simultaneously on multiple displays.

The Macintosh has had the concept of multiple displays, operating in extended desktop mode, for a very long time. This goes back to the Macintosh II, introduced in March 1987, which supported this in software at a time when PCs could only do it using special graphics cards (that supported it on the graphics card itself), or not at all.

It's normal for the menu bar – and the Mac OS X / macOS Dock – to appear only on one of the displays.

Much more recently, Apple has introduced the concept of Spaces. A Space is a virtual desktop. In Sequoia, there is a control in System Settings > Desktop & Dock called Displays have separate Spaces. When disabled, all displays are part of the same Space, and there is only a single menu bar and a single Dock, and you can extend a window so that part is on one display and part on another. When enabled, each display has its own virtual desktop, and I think that along with that, comes the menu bar and the Dock. But each window has to be entirely within one Space – so you can't turn on this control and then make one window span both physical displays.

Note that after changing the setting of the control, you might have to log out and back in (or even reboot the Mac) for the new setting to take effect.

JaredNedzel wrote:

It would be great if that works. But it doesn't. I set "Displays have separate spaces" to on and "Automatically hide and show the dock" to off. Then I rebooted. I have a menu bar on both screens. But the dock still automatically hides and shows. I want the dock visible all the time.

You can have it visible all the time, but not on both displays at once. This has been explained already.

If you have it set not to hide, and yet it still does, it is possible that there is a corrupted plist file.

In Finder, press Command-Shift-G and paste

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Drag this file to your desktop (so you may put it back in case this does not succeed).

Log out and back in.

Your Dock will revert to the default state. In particular, it should be visible all the time.

You will need to set it with the applications that you want.

If all is well, you can drag the plist file from the desktop to the trash. If not, you may put it back.

Luis Sequeira1 wrote:

Would it be nice if you could provide some evidence to your claim that one can have the Dock simultaneously on more than one display. The menu bar is another matter - it can and does appear on all displays if you have “Displays have separate Spaces” turned on. This is the default since Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9). But the same does NOT happen with the Dock, AFAIK.

I only have one monitor – so I can't test this. But if you click on the "?" (Help) button in settings, the macOS Help screen that comes up says, in part,

"Set up separate spaces for each display (if you use Spaces and have multiple displays).

When this option is turned on, the Dock is available on all displays; when it’s turned off, the Dock appears only on the main display."

Apple's words, not mine.

What you want is not possible. There are a couple third-party Dock replacement apps but I don't know if they will do it either.

You can’t have the Dock showing simultaneously on multiple displays (unless mirroring, which of course is not at stake here).

Why would you want it to, anyway? If positioned at the bottom, it still should pop up on another display if you bump the cursor against the bottom of a display.

Also you can change the delay before it shows if it is set to autohide. For example:

defaults write com.apple.dock "autohide-delay" -float "0.2" && killall Dock

Servant of Cats wrote:

Actually, it turns out that you can have the Dock showing simultaneously on multiple displays.

The Macintosh has had the concept of multiple displays, operating in extended desktop mode, for a very long time. This goes back to the Macintosh II, introduced in March 1987, which supported this in software at a time when PCs could only do it using special graphics cards (that supported it on the graphics card itself), or not at all.

It's normal for the menu bar – and the Mac OS X / macOS Dock – to appear only on one of the displays.

Much more recently, Apple has introduced the concept of Spaces. A Space is a virtual desktop. In Sequoia, there is a control in System Settings > Desktop & Dock called Displays have separate Spaces. When disabled, all displays are part of the same Space, and there is only a single menu bar and a single Dock, and you can extend a window so that part is on one display and part on another. When enabled, each display has its own virtual desktop, and I think that along with that, comes the menu bar and the Dock.

Would it be nice if you could provide some evidence to your claim that one can have the Dock simultaneously on more than one display. The menu bar is another matter - it can and does appear on all displays if you have “Displays have separate Spaces” turned on. This is the default since Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9). But the same does NOT happen with the Dock, AFAIK.

Servant of Cats wrote:

"Set up separate spaces for each display (if you use Spaces and have multiple displays).

When this option is turned on, the Dock is available on all displays; when it’s turned off, the Dock appears only on the main display."

I believe that means the Dock will be available to any of the displays. Not to all of them at once.

I suggest that you consider relying less on the Dock - especially with large screens.

Consider the tasks that are you using the Dock for:

Switching to another application? Command-Tab does that, and does not require you to pick up the mouse.

Launching an application? Spotlight does that: command-space, type two or three letters of the name, like Saf, press enter, and you are running Safari. All without taking your hands off the keyboard.

Switching to a different window in the same application? Command-`

+1

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