The macOS Dock Nightmare: How I Finally Stopped It from Jumping Between Screens

For years, I put up with one of macOS’s strangest and most frustrating annoyance: the Dock constantly moving between screens when I least expected it. If you use multiple monitors, you’ve probably experienced this yourself — one moment, the Dock is where you want it, and the next, it’s jumped to a different display, forcing you to interrupt your workflow to fix it.

Republished at https://reverseeverything.com on June 25, 2026.

At first, I thought I was missing a setting. Surely, there must be an option to lock the Dock in place? But after diving into macOS settings, I found no solution.

I turned to Internet, searching through forums, Reddit threads, and Stack Exchange questions dating back more than a decade. The frustration was universal.

One of the earliest public reports dates back to October 2013 on Apple Support Communities, where users described the Dock randomly relocating during normal use and after sleep or Space changes. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5483780

“I’m running Mac Mini M1 on a dual monitor set up and every now and then (I don’t know even how it happens or why), the dock switches from one monitor to the other. It annoys me so much.” (Reddit 3 years ago)

“how can we stop it? Some terminal command or even paid software?” (Apple Discussions 8 years ago)