Dock keeps moving between monitors

Go to System Preferences > Mission Control ... Then deselect the option "Displays have separate Spaces" ...

Been bugging me for a while now. Thanks for the simple solution!

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.

Thanks!!! It worked for me. It was driving me nuts.

Thanks - I just found this issue and now you helped me solve the issue. Appreciate it.

James

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 ...

Ok - I found my own solution that I like well enough because it feels more native to the features as they exist.

First, my setup: I'm using a large monitor and a laptop on dual monitor arms. I pull my laptop off when I want to carry it with me or use it elsewhere. I use them together about 65% of the time.

So for me, to solve the dock snapping annoyance I did the following:

1. I went to System Preferences > Mission Control and deselected the option "Displays have separate Spaces" (as suggested above by tr3vorBrown)
2. I went to System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement and moved the main desktop to the second monitor.

Now, when I'm using both monitors, the dock stays put in the bottom of my larger monitor. When I pull the laptop off, the dock (of course) reverts to the bottom of it.

Having the displays use a single space would probably not have been my first choice, as I like some of the advantages of having the monitors as separate spaces. But it works well for my setup since I almost always want the dock to be on my larger monitor when I'm using both. If I need to swap the dock, I can easily go back to the display settings, and move the apple desktop stuff over to it.

I don't know if that will help anyone, but it works best for me.

thanks very much for this, really helped me as was getting SO frustrated with the dock bar moving to different screens!!

Much appreciated 🙂

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.

thank you very much.. this thing was driving me crazy

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.

Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions. These are mostly user to user discussions.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

Thanks good to know -- Feedback sent

My original hope was that Apple (or someone from Apple) actually read these posts in order to find out where folks might be having issues with their products so that they could have a finger on the pulse and respond to their user base in a pro-active manner. I know some very successful companies actually do this but it is not common (nor for that matter are very successful companies perhaps it is not just a coincidence).

Note: when I say very successful companies I do not mean mega-companies I mean quality companies that can (no matter their size) whether the storms of the industry very effectively because they keep in the fore-front of their minds what is the most important element to their success which for nearly all companies is a happy customer base.