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Dr. McKay

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 20, 2010
821
112
Belgium, Europe
I can no longer launch any apps or open any folders from the Dock in Monterey (2017 27 inch iMac, i5, Radeon Pro 570), Monterey 12.5. Also, when I open an app from the Application folder (that still works) or open a window, it loses focus after a few seconds there must be an app that steals focus, and perhaps that same app is causing the Dock problem.

Strange, I haven't installed any new apps or changed anything about my configuration at all for months, never had this problem...
 
What actually happens when you click on an app icon in the dock? Does the icon bounce or anything?

Also, do you have magnification enabled? If you do, does the icon get magnified when you hover over it? This might tell you if something is stealing focus.

Finally, if you haven't done so, perform a system shutdown, not a restart, wait a minute, and then power up your Mac again and see if that takes care of the problem.
 
No magnification on, no bounce...

But guess what, last night, everything suddenly went back to normal. A first pass with Onyx didn't do anything, a second one did, apparently.

This morning, I booted up like normal, all clear... something to keep my eye on, most definitely, but for the time being, everything seems to be okay.

Thanks for the reply anyway !
 
Sadly, the problem has returned...

Apps bounce in the dock when I launch them from a Finder window, I just can't launch anything from within the dock itself. The focus stealing app seems to behave for now...

Relaunching the Finder does nothing, relaunching the Dock using Tinkertool does nothing. Booted in Safe mode using a wired PC keyboard, didn't do anything.
Tried resetting the PRAM but that doesn't work with a PC keyboard, apparently and I have no wired mac keyboard.

Don't know what else I can do, other than reinstalling...
 
Last edited:
You can try to delete the preference files for Dock and log out
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.extra.plist
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.dock****.plist
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.dock.extra****.plist

From Terminal
Code:
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.*
rm ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.dock.*
 
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