MacOS – Can’t switch to full screen apps or evoke Mission Control after sleep

exposefullscreenmacosmission-controlsleep-wake

Occasionally when I am working and put my MacBook to sleep, when I wake it up again, I am unable to switch to apps that I have had open in full screen. Similarly, if I open an app after sleep, switch to full screen mode and then command-tab to another application, I cannot return the full screen app.

Mission Control ceases to operate and gestures for switching (multi-finger swipes up to Exposé and to the side for screen switching) also fail.

The only fix I have found is a full restart.

My setup is as follows:

  • MacBook Pro 15" Retina Early 2013
  • 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
  • 16 GB RAM
  • OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 (14E17e)
  • Built-in screen and external monitor
  • Apple Magic Trackpad (issue also present with built-in trackpad)

The issue presents itself sporadically and has been present for at least the last few Yosemite releases.

Any help would be very well received 🙂

Best Answer

I get the same symptoms/failure. The following Terminal command fixes it for me:

killall Dock

But before you do that, run killall -s Dock to make sure it's only going to directly kill the one "Dock" process. Dock will restart and then mission control is working again - for me anyway. You can verify that the restart happened by looking at the process ID of "Dock" after the restart. Hope this helps!