The Dock keeps switching on my Macs with dual monitors

Hey there Richard,

It sounds like your dock is moving to your external monitor when you are working in that space. On Mavericks, this is expected behavior. The dock can be available on whatever monitor you are currently working on. Here is some more info on that:

OS X: Using multiple displays in Mavericks

Working with the Dock

When the Dock is configured to appear at the bottom of your screen, it's available on whichever screen you’re working on. Just move your pointer to the bottom of either display. When the Dock is configured for the left or right position, it appears on the leftmost or rightmost display edge.

Tip: If you don't see your dock because it's set to hidden or there's a full screen app on the display, move your pointer to the location of the Dock. If the Dock still doesn't appear, swipe your pointer towards the Dock again to unhide it.

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Regards,

Sterling

Excellent! Glad to hear your Dock is A-OK!

It's a pain in the tush. My solution is to keep the Dock Preferences Window open. Then when the dock jumps (inevitably right where I'm trying to work), I click System Preferences, switch its position on screen from bottom to left (or right) and then switch it back again. That's the only thing that seems to work reliably. Apple, please make this "feature" an option we can turn off!

@christopher - That works perfectly (for a workaround), thanks. I'm now wondering if there's some mechanism to automate that preference toggling...

@apple - Please make this configurable, or at least make it smart enough not to move to the only monitor showing an application fullscreen. I just wasted more time than I care to admit trying to figure out how to get my Dock back because it jumped first to one screen, than to another where it was hidden behind a fullscreen app! Requiring the dock to be docked to the left/right to prevent it moving is unacceptable -- particularly if, like me, you have your monitors stacked vertically.

Sorry, but this post doesn't make sense. If Apple says in their documentation that "When the Dock is configured to appear at the bottom of your screen, it's available on whichever screen you’re working on. Just move your pointer to the bottom of either display." then the dock should move to whatever display your pointer is on. That is NOT what was happening on Mavericks, Yosemite or now on El Capitan. What is happening is the dock moves to a different display at random times and does not move back unless it is forced. This is a bug and needs to be fixed. Please make this "feature" an option so we can turn it off.

I agree with the several commentators who note that Apple's reply is inappropriate.

The dock randomly shifts to the other side - certainly not when I'm working over there - and stays there. It does not return until I use preferences to re-site it. Please provide a relevant reply and, better yet, a fix to this annoying problem

Glenn