How to Keep the Mac Dock on One Screen in a Dual Monitor Setup

Want to lock your Mac’s Dock to one screen? When you’re using mulitple monitors, here are some workarounds you can use.

Loads of people love to use dual monitor setups as they can really boost your productivity if used properly. However, in recent versions of macOS, the Dock shows up on all monitors by default. Some users like this, but maybe you don’t.

Perhaps you prefer to keep the Dock locked to one Mac screen instead. To change this, you have two options. Unfortunately, both are just workarounds, which may or may not be satisfactory for you. But at this time, they’re all you can do, so let’s take a look.

Option 1. Use a Single Space

Open the Apple menu, click System Preferences, and then navigate to the Mission Control section. Uncheck the option called Displays have separate Spaces. For this change to apply, log out and back in.

Afterwards, your Dock should lock to the main monitor. This will keep your Dock on one screen, but there is a downside: You lose other dual-monitor features. These features include each display having its own menu bar and apps being able to run in full-screen view on each display.

You can still use Spaces to manage your Mac apps though.

Option 2. Position the Dock to the Side

For this, again, open the Apple menu and click System Preferences, but this time navigate to the Dock & Menu Bar section. Find the option called Position on screen and set it to either Left or Right. This will lock the Dock to one screen.

The downside to this option is that you won’t be able to use a Dock at the bottom of the screen. This position also doesn’t play nicely if you have three or more monitors, because you’ll have too much screen space to move your cursor across to reach the Dock.

There’s No Perfect Solution

Hopefully one of these two methods will work for locking your Dock to one screen. Unfortunately, Apple still hasn’t come up with a permanent solution to lock the Dock to one screen during multiple monitor use, but we’re hoping a fix comes soon.