I have an external monitor connected to my laptop, and the external monitor is set as the primary display. My problem is that sometimes after I've connected the monitor, the App Switcher still shows on the laptop screen. How can I set/reset it to show on the primary display (external monitor)?
The App Switcher tends to follow where the Dock is located. Place your dock in the monitor where you want your app switcher to be displayed.
For example: if you have two monitors and the dock is on left side hiding then the app switcher will be on left monitor.
If the Dock is on the bottom, the app switcher will be on the monitor where the dock was most recently activated. You can test this by activating the dock and then the app switcher on each display.
BTW I am on Mavericks.
This displays app switcher on both the screens. Works on MacOS Monterey 12.3.1
defaults write com.apple.dock appswitcher-all-displays -bool true
killall Dock
If it isn't working for you even after the killall Dock, try rebooting. This seems to be common for people with M1 chips.
It also works on other versions (Ventura, Big Sur and Catalina)
Just move your mouse pointer to the bottom of your primary display to cause the dock to pop-up (if hidden), and the App Switcher will pin to the display. If you activate the Dock on your secondary display, the App Switcher will pin to it. If you do not use the Pop-up Dock feature, just Click your Downloads icon on the dock in your primary display to move the App Switcher focus back to that display.
In OS X Mavericks, the task switcher is now shown on the screen that previously showed the dock (and in Mavericks this is both screens).
I don't really ever use the dock, but the task switcher jumped to my second monitor (Macbook) all the time anyway.
What worked for me was to move the dock from bottom of the monitor(s) to the right of my main monitor. The task switcher has not jumped back since i did that.
It sometimes happens together with the Dock being unresponsive. Restarting Dock helps.
Type in terminal:
killall Dock
On my MacBook Pro an external monitor, I did the following to get my task switcher on the MacBook screen:
On MacOS 12 Monterey, I got it to move when I turned hiding off on the dock (right click on the dock, "Turn Hiding Off"). Just moving the mouse or mousing over the dock to show it wasn't enough anymore.
Change this setting to off. "When Swithing to an application, swith to a Space with Open windows for the application"
Just in case if anyone facing this issue with macOS sonoma... and want to have the tab switcher always on a primary monitor.
Note: This is only happening for me when the auto hide the dock is turned on.
Strait forward approach is to turn off auto hiding and make the display you want as main display. [You can do this in display settings - main display option]
If you still want the dock hidden and avoid this issue? Change the position of the dock to left if your primary monitor is on left and to right if your primary monitor is on right.
If you're not really using your laptop monitor when you've got your external monitor attached, you can turn on display mirroring to make it act like you've only got one monitor attached.
Go to
Latest Mavericks (10.9.5 as of 2014-09-26):
The dock shows up in both monitors for me which is how I like it. When the App Switcher occasionally appears in the wrong screen, my solution is to interact with the dock in the screen where I want App Switcher to appear.
By "interact" I mean do literally anything with it. Turn magnification on and off again, whatever -- even just clicking on it seems to work. This always seems to get its attention and tell OS X to consider that screen the current primary. Nothing in the System Preferences > Displays seemed to help, but this little trick has, for me, consistently.
Drag to white bar to the primary screen (where you want the app switcher to appear) solved it for me. If it's already on the the primary screen, switch it back and forth to make it work. Screenshot
I had the same exact problem and it was driving me insane, so I opened the system prefs and went to the monitor tab to see if there's a setting, I found nothing and close the preferences and then magically it got fixed, now the application switcher is on my main monitor!
I had this same problem with Mavericks, and I am happy to say that it seems to have been dealt with in Yosemite. There is a setting that allows you to control where tab-switcher appears (e.g. monitor with mouse or monitor with active window).
