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Level 1

0 points

Desktop background disappears, Mission Control doesn't work correctly

Sometimes it happens that my desktop background completely dissappears, and Mission Control stops working as well.

It seems to happen when I open a new window in a fullscreen app (like Safari), and while it's opening I switch to another space.

Whenever this happens, my desktop changes to the Dashboard background, and Mission Control doesn't show the other spaces anymore (but you can see active windows in your main space). I've added pictures below.

I can still swipe between spaces, my dock still works and all apps still work in all spaces.

Any way to fix this without rebooting? To avoid this happening (apart from me being more patient)?

This is my desktop at the moment:

And this is Mission Control:

I am using: Macbook Pro 5,4

OS X 10.7.1

2,53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Aug 24, 2011 10:45 AM

18 replies

iAlias

Level 1

30 points

Mar 27, 2012 7:46 AM in response to Acid_Raccoon

I had this same problem, took me a while to find this post as I was not entirely certain what it related to. But after reading that it happens when switching to full screen mode and switching desktop simultaneously I tried it and sure enough, my background (on only my first desktop) was missing, so I quit iTunes and it was fixed. I opened iTunes again (without switching space to get to full screen) and no problems, I guess it's a bug related to switching to full screen, if you are using any other full screen apps and still having this problem, I'd recommend quitting them and try reopening them.

Aug 30, 2012 1:31 AM in response to Acid_Raccoon

same problem here.. none of the non-restart fixes works for me. suspect its related to having an external monitor attached, where everything with the desktops seems to go bananas.

Sep 24, 2012 4:04 AM in response to Acid_Raccoon

I've also been experiencing odd behaviour with mission control that seem to be related to having a double monitor setup. I found this suggestion while researching the problem.

Open Terminal and use this command (I think it's case sensitive too, FYI)

killall Dock

This is simply a workaround, not exactly an eloquent solution to the problem, but at least prevents me from having to logout or restart to get Mission control working again properly. Hope this helps.

Desktop background disappears, Mission Control doesn't work correctly