How To Change Which Side Your Second Monitor Is On

Mac users tin hide the carte du jour bar in OS 10 El Capitan, just what if you want to move the dock to a second monitor?

How to Move the Dock to Another Monitor in OS X El Capitan

Moving the dock to a second display has been possible on Mac Os Ten for many years, but the dock and menu bar changes in recent versions make information technology worthy of another look.

And then, if you lot're new to macOS or only brushing up on your Mac skills, here's how to move your dock and configure your primary display in Bone X El Capitan or newer. Note that Mac OS Ten is at present called macOS, but the terms Mac Os X and macOS are still used interchangeably.

How to Move the Mac Dock to Another Monitor

There are many different multi-monitor configurations supported past Mac OS X. While the steps discussed here will focus on a dual-brandish structure, they tin can be applied to other setups too.

For this article, our setup is a Mac with two external displays. The display on the right is currently configured as the primary display, while the screen on the left is the secondary display.

Set Your Primary Display

Starting with Os 10 ten.ix Mavericks, the OS will bear witness the menu bar by default on all displays. Still, the default location of your dock and the appearance of desktop icons volition tell yous which monitor is currently your chief display.

To change this upward, follow these instructions:

1. Go toSystem Preferences

2. Click on Displays.

3. Next, click on the System tab.

The "Arrangements" tab will evidence 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.

1 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 card bar on all monitors. Still, it helps us identify which monitor is currently the primary brandish.

If you're connecting many displays to your Mac for the first fourth dimension and you aren't certain which icon in System Preferences corresponds to which physical monitor on your desk, click and hold to select one of the icons. A red edge volition appear around the monitor the icon represents.

Once you've identified all of your Mac's displays, yous can click in the bluish area of any display icon and drag and drop it to the appropriate position. This process arranges your virtual monitor images to match the bodily layout of your physical monitors.

To make the monitor on the left your primary display, click and hold on the white bar at the top of the right icon, and then drag and drop it on the left icon.

When you lot release the white bar on the left brandish icon, all of your screens briefly dim to blackness. When the desktop reappears, your new monitor—in our example, the one on the left—will at present contain the dock, active application windows, and any desktop icons.

Suppose y'all don't like the new display arrangement. In that case, you tin revert to having the right monitor configured equally your primary display again past heading into 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 will take outcome immediately, so there's no need to reboot or log out to see your changes.

Move Only the Dock to Another Monitor

Starting with Os X 10.10 Yosemite, in that location's a new method for moving just the dock to another brandish without making changes to your primary screen in System Preferences.

To effort it, move your mouse or trackpad cursor to the very bottom of the brandish where y'all want your dock to appear and hold information technology at that place.

Later a brief moment, the dock slides down and out of sight on your primary display. Information technology and so slides up into view on the other screen.

Every bit you can see in the screenshot above, the Mac system displays the dock on the left monitor. Simultaneously, the desktop icons and active windows associated with your primary display configuration remain on the right one.

Once your desired monitor displays the dock, yous can hands reposition information technology to the left, right, or default bottom of the screen to suit your liking.