We here at TechJunkie have previously discussed how Mac users can hide the menu bar in OS X El Capitan, but what if you want to move the dock to a second monitor?
Moving the dock to a second display has been possible on Mac OS X for many years, but the changes to the dock and menu bar in recent versions of the Mac OS X make it worthy of another look.
So, if you’re new to macOS or just brushing up on your Mac skills, here’s how to move your dock and configure your primary display in OS X El Capitan. Note that Mac OS X is now just called macOS, but the terms Mac OS X and macOS can be used interchangeably.
How to Move the Mac Dock to Another Monitor
There are many different multi-monitor configurations supported by Mac OS X, and while the steps discussed here will focus on a dual-display configuration, they can be applied to other setups as well.
For this article, our setup is a Mac with two external displays. The display on the right is configured as the primary display and the display on the left is set as the secondary display.
Set Your Primary Display
Starting with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, OS X will show the menu bar by default on all displays, but the default location of your dock and the appearance of desktop icons will tell you which monitor is currently configured as your primary display.
To change this up, follow these instructions:
1. Go to System Preferences
2. Then click on Displays
3. Next, click on the Arrangement tab.
The “Arrangements” tab will show you the layout and relative resolution of all monitors currently connected to your Mac, including the built-in display on a MacBook (i.e., the laptop monitor itself) with each monitor represented by a blue rectangle icon.
One of the display icons will have a white bar at the top, representing the menu bar. This depiction is a holdover from older versions of OS X which did not display the menu bar on all monitors, but it helps us identify which monitor is currently set as the primary display.
If you’re connecting many displays to your Mac for the first time and you aren’t sure which icon in System Preferences corresponds to which physical monitor on your desk, simply click and hold on one of the icons and a red border will appear around the monitor it represents.
Once you’ve identified all of your Mac’s displays, you can click in the blue area of any display icon and drag and drop it in the appropriate position to arrange your virtual display to match the actual layout of your physical monitors.
To set the monitor on the left as the primary display, click and hold on the white bar at the top of the right icon and drag and drop it on the left icon.
When you release the white bar on the left display icon, all of your displays will briefly dim to black. When the desktop reappears, your new monitor — in our example, the one on the left — will now contain the dock, active application windows, and any desktop icons.
If you don’t like this new arrangement, you can always revert to having the right monitor configured as your primary display by heading back to System Preferences and dragging the white bar back to the desired monitor icon.
Other than the brief period in which the displays dim, your changes each time will take effect immediately so there’s no need to reboot or log out in order to see your changes.
Move Only the Dock to Another Monitor
Starting with OS X 10.10 Yosemite, there’s a new method for moving just the dock to another display without making changes to your primary display in System Preferences.
To try it, simply move your mouse or trackpad cursor to the very bottom of the display where you want your dock to appear and hold it there.
After a brief moment, the dock will slide down and out of sight on your primary display and then slide up into view on your other display.
As you can see in the screenshot above, our example Mac now has only the dock on the left monitor, while the desktop icons and active windows associated with your primary display configuration remain on the right monitor.
Once the dock is located on your desired monitor, you can easily reposition the dock to the left, right, or default bottom of the screen as desired.
Learn More
If you’re a Mac user and found this article useful, you might want to check out How to Copy and Save Images from Safari on the Mac.
Do you have two or more monitors on your Mac running OS X El Capitan? If so, have you changed the dock from one display to another? Please tell us about your experiences with this process in the comments below?
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