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I'm relatively new to macOS. I'm using macOS Mojave and I have 2 monitors. I want the dock to stay on my right screen. My problem is when I move the mouse to the the bottom center on my left screen the dock permanently changes it's location to the left screen until I do the same again on my right screen.

The following solutions do not work for me for reasons below:

  • I don't want the dock to move to right. I want it at the bottom.
  • I don't want to disable separate spaces because I want to use this feature.

Is there any way to do this besides these 2 options?

D3SOX
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  • The 'quick fix' is to disable "Displays have Separate Spaces" then it will stay right where you put it. There are a few posts already about this - eg https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/217468/3-monitors-in-a-row-and-i-want-the-dock-in-the-middle – Tetsujin Apr 19 '19 at 08:27

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I use 2 external monitors on my MacBook Pro. The dock jumping around drove me crazy.It is by far my biggest MacOS gripe. I tried the auto-hiding dock but didn’t like it either. So today I installed a 3rd party app ubar 4. It seems to work well and so far I’m very pleased. The status bar stays where it supposed to. It is very customizable and I am tuning it to my taste. It does cost $30, but it fixes a problem that Apple should have addressed.

The paradigm is similar in some respects to the menu system the Mac had pre-OS X. TBH I was never a fan of the Dock. I felt it was a step backward,but I got used to it. But to-date Ubar is the best solution I’ve found.

Dave Ruedeman
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I will explain to you how it's implemented, but I don't believe it's what you want.

I have 4 monitors. When I set the dock to "bottom", with auto-hide off, moving to the center of any of the monitors cause the dock to jump to the bottom of that monitor and stay there until I do the same on another monitor.

If I set the dock to the left or right, it will remain permanently on either the left-most or right-most monitor.

I do not believe it is possible to have the dock on the bottom of ONLY one of the monitors. It just doesn't work that way.

Unfortunately, sometimes the answer is "You can't do that."

There may be a third-party app somewhere that would allow you to pin the dock to the bottom of only one display, but I'm unaware of any.

My suggestion is that you file a RADAR with Apple and request it as a future feature.

I can envision writing an app that would do what you're asking, but given that a quick check of all the multi-monitor software developers and video editors I know shows all of them with either a left-side or right-side dock, the audience would be insignificant...if I thought I could get 200 people to pay $1, I'd set up a Patreon and do it, but I think you're a lonely unicorn...

See Why does my dock keep moving back to my other monitor?

Wilfred Smith
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    Thank you for your detailed answer. Okay this is really sad because that's the only major "issue" I'm facing with macOS. I'm already using cDock so I think I will contact the developer of this tool and ask if he can implement this. I hope Apple will implement more options for the dock and generally customization options in macOS because I'm really a "customization guy" – D3SOX Apr 19 '19 at 00:37
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This may or may not make a difference, but is worth a try.

Under System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement drag the menu bar (thin white rectangle) to your rightmost display.

I'm only mentioning this because in my case the dock was stuck on one monitor (the opposite of your problem), and moving the menu bar from my MacBook Pro's display to my external monitor resolved this (dock tracks to monitor now). I just tested moving the menu bar back to the MacBook and it anchors the dock to that monitor again (cannot be displayed on the other monitor).

I am using Catalina and like you use separate spaces.

Bill Gale
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Having this problem myself on a new Mac and a bit mystified because on my old Mac I had docks on all monitors I poked around a little.

I think the only way to have the dock on all monitors is to check "Automatically hide and show the dock" in System Preferences > Dock. It doesn't show the dock on all monitors but it's available on all monitors and is a lot less mouse travel.

Chris Pink
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