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We know why it is moving: Why does my dock keep moving back to my other monitor?

Now, how can we stop it? Some terminal command or even paid software?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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You cannot "just" stop it, unfortunately.

You have some options to keep it in the same place, but they have drawbacks:

A) Keep the dock on the left or right side of the desktop. That way it will stay in place.

or

B) In Preferences => Mission Control, uncheck "Displays have separate Spaces". Now the dock will stay in place, but monitors will switch spaces together rather than independently.

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    You don't lose Spaces functionality, merely change how it works. You would then have 2 displays in each Space & they will switch together rather than independently. For some people [me included], this is preferred functionality.
    – Tetsujin
    May 28, 2016 at 11:37
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    Yes, that's right - but depending on how you want it to work, you would loose the effect of having seperate spaces for each display. If you really want that, then you're out of luck. If you don't care for that, then this solution is really good.
    – jksoegaard
    May 28, 2016 at 13:16
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    The problem I'm seeing with losing the spaces functionality is that if you full screen an application the other displays go dark because they can't share a space with a fullscreen space. So instead of fullscreening an application you need to maximize it in a new space which has its own drawbacks. Or is there a way around that too?
    – Jens Bodal
    Oct 4, 2018 at 17:29
  • Looks like disabling the Preferences > Mission Control > "Displays have separate spaces" setting now also disables the menu bar on all other non-primary monitors too. The dock no longer switches monitors as you'd want though, so that part is at least still working as expected.
    – Scott Kingsley Clark
    Mar 28, 2022 at 1:22
  • It seems like any time I have a question "How to get rid of some annoying shit on my MacBook", the answer is either "you can't" or "you kinda can, but there are some drawbacks". I use both an iPhone and a MacBook, and I find both a pain in the ass...
    – Gene Pavlovsky
    Oct 11, 2022 at 7:31
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Although you can't stop it happening, you can reset its position by restarting the Dock process:

sudo killall Dock

Worked for me like @Allan or @Scott Reed suggested.

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    It would be helpful if you indicated how just killing the dock solved the issue.
    – Steve Chambers
    Oct 9, 2020 at 21:43
  • So it reads the new settings and does not require a reboot.
    – Martlark
    May 4, 2021 at 4:56
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    It's not difficult to reset the Dock's position, but my main annoyance with this is that all the windows that I had previously maximized on that screen where the Dock (unwantedly) moved, are now not fully maximized (their height is reduced by the height of the Dock), and I have to re-maximize each window...
    – Gene Pavlovsky
    Oct 11, 2022 at 7:30
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My solution is to create a new shortcut with ICanHazShortcut with the terminal command "killall Dock". When you press the shortcut key you designate, it will move the dock back to the primary monitor.

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