dock is disappearing on my mac os x version 10.7.4?

OK run disk repair...or better yet, verify disk. FIRST though, quit every application. The verify disk in Disk Utility likes to be the only thing going... open DU, then click on the drive, then to lower right, click on verify disk. Go make a cup of tea, and come back and see if it has identified things it had to correct.

Then run repair disk permissions and see what it says then.

Turning off for the night saves some elctricity, but too, during day a time or two only takes a minute to restart. The picture of the apple top left of screen, then 'restart' and when it comes up it will have cleane d a bunch of stuff that adds up to cause trouble..

The command I gave you deletes the property list file which basically governs how your Dock looks. Deleting it will force Mac OS to remake the file with the default settings.

I'm sure if the command I posted was going to do anything dodgy, someone would have mentioned it by now. Here's it explained:

sudo - grants you temporary "root permissions"

rm - remove (delete)

~/Library/Preferences/ - where the file is located

com.apple.Dock.plist - the file we want to delete

Alternatively, you click on the Desktop, whilst holding down ALT–click the "Go" button and choose "Library". Open the "Preferences" folder and find "com.apple.Dock.plist" drag it do the trash and empty it.

The command I supplied you with is a quick way of doing the long winded way.

Morgan

that sounds logical.

Thanks Morgan, will use this method just to see if it works whenever I "catch" the glitch again!

Q&A: The Case of the Disappearing Dock

Q.

The Dock on my Mac OS X screen suddenly disappeared and now it only shows up if I pass the mouse cursor along the bottom of the screen. How can I make it go back to always being there?

A.

To conserve screen clutter, the Mac OS X Dock — the taskbarlike strip of program and folder shortcuts typically found along the bottom edge of the screen — can be set to hide from view when not in use. If you pass the mouse cursor along the area where the Dock normally lives, it reappears just long enough for you to click the program or icon you were looking for and disappears again when you move the mouse away.

This hide-and-seek behavior can get triggered if you accidentally press the keyboard shortcut for the setting, which is Option-Command-D. To return the Mac’s Dock to its always-visible status, press Option-Command-D again to toggle the setting back the other way.

Another way to make the Dock stop disappearing is to go under the Apple menu in the top left corner of the screen. Choose the System Preferences option and then click in the Dock icon on the screen of control panels. In the Dock Preferences box, remove the checkmark from the box next to “Automatically hide and show the Dock.” The Dock Preferences box has other settings you can adjust as well, including the size of the icons and the part of the screen (left, bottom or right) to anchor the Dock.

Thank you...it worked for me.

I had both the dock and top menu disappear, and it turnout out that this was caused by me running a Full screen window (ABC iView V.O.D. in safari) in my secondary external monitor which is connected to iMac by the thunderbolt port. I was surprised because the dock and menu are only shown in the primary iMac screen.

I had exactly the same thing. I was also watching a full screen video on youtube, when all of a sudden Flash player crashed and dok dissappeared. When i clicked at the bottom of the screen it popped back up, and when i clicked back on browser - dissapears. Restarted browser... like nothing ever happened.

Thanks! That worked for me. I turned hiding ON. Then turned it OFF. My dock came back. Thank you!

ja2010 wrote:

how do i get my dock to apper at bottom of my computer again?

The same thing happened to me on my macbook pro, but this will most likely go for the mac.

What I did, is I just restarted my computer and the dock came back.

OR, you could go to the on the top left of your screen, click then click turn hiding off.

Worked for me too - turn on hiding, close preferences, mouse over where the dock should be to make the dock briefly appear, then re-open preferences, turn off hiding. Now the dock bar stays.

But come on, people pay big money to use Apple products. Do we really need to have to deal with this kind of crap? This should not be happening to begin with. This is like driving an old car and having to wiggle the steering wheel to get the car to start.

If you resize your viewing screen by simly drgging it to the new size. First miminise the screen, then grab the bottom right of screen and resize vertically, then click on the left hand side of the screen adnd drag to the left...

I was having a similar issue, but in my case found it was due to Airplay mirroring resetting the screen resolution to 780p. Hope this helps.

I was baffled and did everything you guys told me to do, then I realized that the problem was only when I used Safari, when I used Google the problem was not there. I found out that I was using full screen on Safari. If that happens to you go to View in Safari go to the bottom of the pull down and turn off full screen

JasonGisCool wrote:

Q&A: The Case of the Disappearing Dock

By J.D. BIERSDORFER

Q.

The Dock on my Mac OS X screen suddenly disappeared and now it only shows up if I pass the mouse cursor along the bottom of the screen. How can I make it go back to always being there?

A.

To conserve screen clutter, the Mac OS X Dock — the taskbarlike strip of program and folder shortcuts typically found along the bottom edge of the screen — can be set to hide from view when not in use. If you pass the mouse cursor along the area where the Dock normally lives, it reappears just long enough for you to click the program or icon you were looking for and disappears again when you move the mouse away.

This hide-and-seek behavior can get triggered if you accidentally press the keyboard shortcut for the setting, which is Option-Command-D. To return the Mac’s Dock to its always-visible status, press Option-Command-D again to toggle the setting back the other way.

Another way to make the Dock stop disappearing is to go under the Apple menu in the top left corner of the screen. Choose the System Preferences option and then click in the Dock icon on the screen of control panels. In the Dock Preferences box, remove the checkmark from the box next to “Automatically hide and show the Dock.” The Dock Preferences box has other settings you can adjust as well, including the size of the icons and the part of the screen (left, bottom or right) to anchor the Dock.

Sometimes the dock disappears when using a full screen application (like having spotify in full screen on one desktop but using multiple desktops for other tasks, not in full screen) and won't reappear again, even on the other desktops.

However, I found pressing Option-Command-D twice restored it back to it always showing. Once fixed the problem but turned it onto the hide-from-view mode. Thank you Jason.