Dock keeps moving between monitors

Oh man! Thanks Sputnik!

I noticed this when I got my new MacBook Pro with Mavericks pre-installed. The Dock would magically and seemingly randomly jump to my built-in monitor from my external 30". Today I noticed that when I was trying to grab a corner of a window that was filling the screen, the dock made the leap. I thought maybe it was a hot corner setting but no.

Now that I know it's a feature, I'm going to use it!

That's exaclty it. I use a Cintiq 13HD and discovered this by accident - you have to "click" on the monitor you want it to appear and then move the cursor to where the dock would be. This makes the dock appear there.

I confirm this bug on Mavericks (10.9.4) with one external monitor attached to a MBP 15" non-retina. The two screens belong to the same space. It happened a few times in the recent past but I thought I did something wrong. Then a few minutes ago, while I was NOT touching the keyboard nor the magic trackpad, the dock suddenly switched from my external monitor to my MBP screen... Ahem.

interesting. Seems like a bug until you realise it is a feature. Not sure why I'd need this, but obviously useful to some users. Now I have closure and understand why my dock keeps moving. Phew.

thanks for posting

That is just effing amazing. How are people supposed to know it's a feature and not a random bug without doing a really accurate google search?

It's got to be something you can turn on. 1% of the people would use it, probably 10% actually run into it once and a while and it's a bug.

Thank you all!

This was driving me nuts as I have hot corners (lower right and left) setup for my screen saver and the dock was jumping all over the place.

Going into Mission Control and unchecking Displays have separate Spaces fixed my problem. Now if I drive the mouse down hard in the center of the other screen the dock no longer jumps to that screen.

Hope this helps someone.

Guys, it is very simple once you get it and it is an awesome feature. Simply position you mouse to the bottom of the screen on which you want your dock to appear and keep moving the mouse down for a moment (imagine it like pulling your notification frame down on the iPhone) - simply pull the mouse down a bit when you're at the bottom - the dock will switch instantly.

Hope it helps 🙂

By instantly, you must mean after 2-3 seconds. (On a new MBP at least). And it often takes me two or three tries to get it to move back where I want it. And I'm not exactly uncoordinated. It's an awesome feature if you like your UI doing random things and getting in the way of your UX. Serious POLA foul.

I know apple Intended this to be a feature. But clearly that is not how many of us, the users, (you know the guys who buy their pricy hardware and keep apple in business) to not perceive it that way. To us, however well intended, THIS IS A BUG, because the system not only does not behaving as we want it, but worse, in a way we find highly annoying.

Multiple Menu bars is generally 'a good thing' really. All the usefullness of a menu at the top of the screen goes away when your app is on one screen and the menu on another.. (in that situation menus at top of windows is actually better).. that is good, we want that.

Never being able to predict where the dock is hiding , or having it jump screens seemingly at random is a PITA. So is having to leave room for it on ALL my displays because the mouse might just happen to drift to the bottom of the screen while I am typing and POW the darned dock moves I'm fine with leaving room for the dock at the bottom of one display, but not all three, I want to use that room. and setting the dock to autohide causes other issues..

I want the Dock fixed at the bottom of the screen I choose, for it not to move, and for there to be menubars at the top of all screens.

It's a sad day when Apple can't do something better than microsoft but the fact of the matter is for my money, MS still does multi-mon better than apple.

Just move your mouse to the middle bottom of whatever monitor you want the dock on, and it'll jump there. I'm sure that's what you are accidentally doing when it switches without cause.

I as well wish there was a way to turn it off, but now that I know what's causing it, I am much happier.

dipakcg wrote:

Here is the steps I followed to fix this problem (it's a feature actually)

[1] Minimize all the open windows

[2] Click on the center part of the menu (top) of the screen in which you want Dock to be appreared (no matter it's first, second or third)

[3] Simply move your cursor to the bottom of that screen

...Dock should appreared in that particular screen.

I hope this helps!

You can skip steps one and two. Simply dragging your mouse to the bottom of the screen where you want the dock, will do it.

As pointed out by many, this is a feature - moving the dock between monitors is accomplished by sliding the mouse cursor to the bottom of the monitor on which you want the dock to appear.

However, this behavior is very clunky: it tends to be unresponsive when I do want it and prone to bouncing between monitors when I don't want it!

What I'd much prefer is to use a keystroke (or right-click) to set the dock in the monitor of my choice and leave it there until I want to move it again. If anyone knows of a means to achieve this natively, I'd love to hear it. I'm otherwise going to resort to locking the dock each time I want to place it where it I want it (a la http://osxdaily.com/2010/02/08/lock-the-dock-in-mac-os-x/) - I don't yet know if this will cause the dock to stay put in any one monitor, but it's worth a try -- this is also a little clunky, but in the end perhaps less frustrating than having the dock bounce around when I don't want it to do so and then waiting a while for it to come back to the monitor I want while my mouse sits at the bottom of the screen --- makes for a big, annoying distraction when trying to get into a flow state for work ...

Thank you so much for the link (http://osxdaily.com/2010/02/08/lock-the-dock-in-mac-os-x/). I think this finally fixed this issue for me once and for all. I really don't understand why anyone would need to easily keep moving their dock from one screen to another.

This was a simple and REAL fix. Just make sure you have the dock where you want it and type in two lines at a Terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.Dock position-immutable -bool yes

killall Dock

Done and done! Love it. Thanks again.

I too have this issue. Only after my dock flips to the other screen, no amount of jerking the mouse up and down brings a happy ending. I have to manually go to sys prefs and click the radio buttons.

I've tried the fix suggested, If it doesn't work, I'll be back!

We're calling it a bug, but it seems it's an Apple Hidden Feature. Steve wouldn't put up with this kind of superficial fluffery...

Well thanks to all who came before me and found out what the issue was.

By the way, being a programmer, the terminology "It is an undocumented feature" comes up often however it is just another way of saying IT'S A BUG without actually calling it a bug. Now that is not to say that it was not planned and implemented as it is but the mere fact that it is not documented and that it still affects people today means the "Bug" resides within the documentation department assuming that is really is a feature and not simply some bug that they have not figured out how to fix. The only real reason to not document something is because it was not planned to be there and/or there is no plan to keep it.

So Apple if this is truly a "feature" as the claim seems to be then you ought to create a tool tip that informs people what it is and how to work around it and even better (as someone already suggested) be able to toggle this single feature off without toggling any other features off. Considering how it seems to be implemented that should be almost as simple as if (toolbarautomove == true) ImplementAutoMoveFeature; this way the auto-move aspect of the toolbar does not take place if someone has toggled it off.