Dock Disappeared After Upgrading Mac to macOS Catalina

Did your Dock Disappear After Upgrading Mac to macOS Catalina? The Dock is one of the important feature available on Mac which allow us to quickly access Mac applications. Many Mac users have reported that the Dock has disappeared after upgrading mac to macOS Catalina. Today in this article I will provide all possible steps to fix the dock disappearing issue. Let’s start with a few real-life scenarios:

Scenario 1: OS X Catalina – Dock Has Disappeared

Just updated to Catalina with my iMac Pro 2017 & the dock has disappeared this morning. It was here last night after the update but nothing today. It won’t show again – anybody experiencing this too?

Check the Dock Settings

Go to the Apple Menu, select System Preferences and then Dock. Here it allows you to change dock appearance settings. Please check to make sure the dock is not set to hide. You can use Option+Command+D to show or hide Dock. Use Option+Command+D to check if the dock appears or not.

Restart Your Mac

Most of the time a simple restart takes care of the dock issue. Go to the Apple menu and click on restart. Check the dock after the restart. In case the issue still persists then move on to the next step.

Use Commands to Fix Dock Disappearance

Try both the commands one by one check the dock after each command. Type these command into the terminal and it will reset the Dock back to defaults.

Launch Terminal application and type the following commands and hit Enter:

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide -bool false; killall Dock

defaults delete com.apple.dock; killall Dock

Try Single Monitor

The issue has been noticed if the Mac is connected to multiple monitors. Try restarting your Mac with 2nd monitor disconnected and then check the dock.

You can also try this: Restart your Mac with a single monitor connected, once dock appears fine, switch on the second monitor.

Reset the Preferences

• Go to the Finder
• Press and hold the Option key, click on Go in the Finder menu bar.
• Click on Library to open the Library folder
• Click on the Preferences folder, find and locate the file named com.apple.dock.plist
• Move this folder to the Trash and restart your Mac

Use Mac in Safe Mode

• Shut down your Mac.
• Restart your Mac and immediately press and hold the Shift key.
• Release the Shift key when you see the Apple logo. Safe Boot appears on the macOS Catalina start-up screen.

In the Dock works fine in Safe Mode then you have to isolate the software which is causing the Dock disappearance issue.

Create a New Admin Account

• Go to the Apple menu > System Preferences > click on Users & Groups.

• Click on the lock icon to unlock it, enter your administrator name and password.

• Hit Add or Plus icon to create new account

• Click the New Account pop-up menu, select type of user i.e. Standard or Administrator user. Enter all the necessary details and then click on Create User.

Now check the dock, if the dock appears fine, then continue using the current profile.

Wrap Up

I hope one of the steps should help you fix the Dock Disappearance issue After Upgrading Mac to macOS Catalina.