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command ⌘+tab⇥ and my Exposé shortcuts have stopped working, and clicking/mousing over dock icons has no effect.

What's wrong? What can I do to get things back?

Peter Burns
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9 Answers9

90

Your Dock has become unresponsive. It's rare, but it does sometimes happen. To fix it you just need to kill the Dock app and it will automatically restart. To kill the Dock:

Go to Applications ➔ Utilities ➔ Terminal.app

Type killall Dock

If that doesn't work, type killall -9 Dock

The Dock will vanish for a few moments and then pop back up good as new. None of your apps should be affected.

Edit: sudo killall Dock would kill other users' docks, and isn't even more likely to work. Thanks derober for pointing that out. killall -9 Dock is the right command

Peter Burns
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    sudo killall Dock would kill /other/ users' docks, not at all what you intended. If Dock refuses to die, try killall -9 Dock. – derobert Jul 18 '09 at 05:38
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    Killing others' docks is kinda funny, but you're right, it's not at all what I intended. Good eye. – Peter Burns Jul 18 '09 at 06:09
  • @PeterBurns It's perfectly acceptable to select your own answer as the correct one. –  Sep 20 '15 at 05:36
  • This tip did not work for me immediately but after pressing ctrl-F3 it started working. So maybe there is some strange dependency there. – Nikola Schou Jun 04 '20 at 14:50
  • And to open the terminal or to switch to any other window, minimize the current window and do it. Didn't work for me when it was full-screen – Ceres Apr 03 '21 at 14:35
  • If you run Docker, or other apps with name starting with 'Dock', you may need to be a bit careful about which processes are killed. I found that `pgrep Dock` (sort of a preview of killall) only showed 1 of 3 process IDs (PIDs) for Dock.app. To be sure what you are about to kill, try `ps aux | grep 'Dock\.app'` to get a list, then do `kill` command on the PID numbers listed in 2nd column. – RichVel Apr 06 '21 at 12:23
  • I found I had to kill 2 Dock.app processes, and the `ps aux | grep ...` command was easiest way to find those. Using Activity Monitor only showed one of these. Best non-terminal option is probably to Force Quit the Finder app, which should work well - see BinaryMisfit answer. – RichVel Apr 06 '21 at 12:34
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http://blog.peterhaza.no/cmd-tab-and-dock-not-working-in-os-x/

And so I fired up Activity Monitor and force killed Dock. Two seconds later my Dock popped up and ⌘ ⇥ worked again.

TheTXI
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7

Another option for reference purpose for those that do not want to use terminal and this works even if the dock is hanging:

Alt+Cmd+esc will open the Force Quit Applications window and you can kill finder from there. Also right-clicking on the dock area should popup a Force Quit option if the dock is unresponsive.

This is an alternative for those that can't find their way around in the terminal

BinaryMisfit
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3

Just note that you will need to be an administrator of your mac if you want to kill the Dock and fix it.

sudo killall Dock will be necessary to do this as an admin.

Niall
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Glad to hear you managed to get the Dock back... often the cause of problems like that is a dodgy third-party Dashboard Widget (DashboardClient runs as a child process of the Dock). Worth bearing in mind if the problem recurs...

I find Dashboard to be a more or less useless resource hog anyway... there's an article here about how to disable it.

avstrallen
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On your Mac:

Navigate to System Preferences Go to Mission Control Uncheck "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application"

doenoe
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Shiju
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Just log out using the apple sign in the top left corner and then re-login, tadaaa, everything starts working. In case, this doesn't work for you, you can go for other answers and give them a try.

Arghya
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    Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – Community Jan 26 '22 at 05:23
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Had the exact same problem, ended up finding solution on Apple support communities https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3384782?start=30&tstart=0

Summarized below, thanks to watski

I deleted ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/*.db and killed the Dock in Activity Viewer. Now it seems to behave. For the record I tried deleting the dock .plist, setting VMWare preferences and so on but in vein. Rebooting did not help either.

Tony
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Your Dock has become unresponsive. It's rare, but it does sometimes happen. To fix it you just need to kill the Dock app and it will automatically restart

The Dock is launched as part of Finder, so you can just relaunch Finder from the "Force Quit" menu, which is accessible via with Cmd + Alt + Escape

dbr
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