Problem with Mac OSX Dock not “unhiding”

I had a strange problem with my Mac (OSX 10.4.4) this morning–the Dock wouldn’t “unhide”. Normally I keep the Dock hidden to save screen real estate, and when I need to fire up one of my usual applications I just drag the mouse down to the bottom edge of the screen and voilà, the Dock pops up with all of my favorite apps. But this morning the Dock was being shy and wouldn’t reveal itself. I tried toggling all the preferences, but nothing helped. I finally found this suggestion on Apple’s Finder, Dock & Dashboard discussion site (registration required, or read my version of it here):

Delete (or move/rename) the com.apple.dock.plist in your ~Library/Preferences Folder, then log out and log back in. This worked for me, but I lost my Dock settings, in particular the applications that were in my dock! It seems obvious in hindsight, but I suggest that you make a list of your docked applications before you whack the preferences file, so you won’t have to repopulate your Dock from memory.

About Jim Vanderveen

I'm a bit of a Renaissance man, with far too many hobbies for my free time! But more important than any hobby is my family. My proudest accomplishment has been raising some great kids! And somehow convincing my wife to put up with me since 1988. ;)
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2 Responses to Problem with Mac OSX Dock not “unhiding”

  1. Michael says:

    I have had the same problem, but only since upgrading to 10.5. I stumbled on a fix (I had been restarting when it got to be annoying enough to be worth it).

    What has worked for me every time so far is to click on a blank area of the desktop and then type command-A. The dock instantly goes back to behaving the way I want it to.

  2. Arturogui says:

    this worked for me thanks!

    but
    I bet it will come back!

    it might be related to systemUIserver

    it might be a failing pram battery

    iMac G5 running tiger 10.4.11 all uptodate, max RAM

    interesting that the problem still exists in 10.5

    Best wishes
    Art

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