What to do when your whole Mac freezes

Wait a full minute, then check whether the pointer still moves. If it does, one app is stuck and the Mac is fine: press Option-Command-Escape, pick the app in the Force Quit window and click Force Quit. If the pointer is frozen too, give the Mac a few more minutes, and only then hold the power button until the screen goes dark. Often what looks like a frozen Mac is one stuck app.

This page puts those steps in order, so you do the least drastic thing first and lose the least work.

Step 1: Is it the Mac, or one app?

A Mac that is really frozen and a Mac with one stuck app feel the same for the first few seconds. Two quick checks tell them apart.

• Move the pointer. If it glides around, macOS itself is running. The stuck part is an app, and you can deal with it.
• Try the Dock and the menu bar. If the Dock still shows app names as you move over its icons, or the menu bar still opens its menus, the system is alive.

A spinning beach ball over one window, with everything else still working, is the classic one-app case. The spinning beach ball on a Mac: what it means and what to do covers what the ball is telling you. If the pointer moves but nothing you click responds, that is usually the front app hogging the screen, and the next step still works.

If the pointer is frozen, the screen does not change, and the keyboard does nothing, then the Mac really is stuck. Skip to step 4.

Step 2: Give it a minute

Macs often look frozen when they are only very busy. A Mac that has just woken from sleep, just finished a macOS update, or just run out of memory can stall for a while and then recover on its own. Force quitting too early can cost you work that would have survived.

Wait a full minute without touching anything. Do not click repeatedly, because clicks can be held in a queue and acted on all at once when the app recovers. If the beach ball is still there after a minute and the pointer still moves, go on.

Step 3: Force quit the stuck app

When one app is the problem, this is the step that fixes it.

1. Press Option-Command-Escape. The Force Quit Applications window opens. You can also open it from the Apple menu with Force Quit.
2. Look for an app marked “(not responding)”. macOS adds that label when an app stops answering it. If none is marked, pick the app you were using when the freeze began.
3. Click Force Quit and confirm.

Force Quit ends the app at once, so anything you had not saved in it is gone. Many apps autosave and reopen with your documents, but do not count on it. Quit vs force quit on a Mac: what you lose with each goes through what survives.

If the Force Quit window does not open, or the app will not go, try these in order:

• Click the Apple menu and choose Force Quit, if the menu bar still responds.
• Press Command-Tab to switch to another app and see whether that one works. If it does, the Mac is fine and only the first app is stuck.
• Read How to force quit an app that won’t force quit for what to do when the usual routes fail.

When the stuck app is gone, the beach ball usually vanishes and the Mac speeds back up.

Step 4: Hold the power button, as a last resort

If the pointer is frozen, the keyboard does nothing and several minutes have passed, hold the power button until the screen goes dark. On a MacBook it is the key at the top right of the keyboard, which doubles as the Touch ID button on models that have Touch ID. On a desktop Mac it is the power button on the Mac itself. It can take up to about ten seconds of holding. Then wait a few seconds, and press it once more to start the Mac again.

This is the last resort for a reason. Holding the power button cuts power without letting apps save or close. You lose unsaved work in every open app, not just the stuck one. macOS is built to recover from an occasional forced shutdown, but you should not make it your first move or your habit.

If a Mac freezes in the middle of installing a macOS update, give it much longer than a few minutes before you do this. Updates can sit on one screen for a long while, and a progress bar that looks stuck is often still working.

Step 5: Find the cause afterwards

A freeze that happens once is usually not worth chasing. One that happens twice in a week has a cause, and these are the usual ones.

The disk is nearly full. macOS needs free space to work. Open System Settings, go to General > Storage and see how much is left. A drive that is nearly full can make everything slow and apps more likely to hang.

Memory ran out. When a Mac needs more memory than it has, it leans on the disk and can seem to lock up for a while. Is your Mac using swap? What it means and when to worry explains this.

One app keeps doing it. If the same app is stuck each time, update it, and if that does not help, look for a newer version or another way to do that job. Pay attention to what you were doing when it froze: a certain file, a certain website, a plugin.

Something is plugged in. A flaky USB hub, external drive or display can stall a Mac. Unplug everything except power, use the Mac for a day, and add things back one at a time.

The Mac is too hot. A Mac that gets hot slows itself down to cool off, and a very hot one can feel close to stuck. Check the vents are clear and the Mac is not on a bed or a cushion.

Where Foreman helps, and where it does not

Foreman is a Task Manager for macOS, and it cannot help you in the middle of a total freeze, because nothing on a frozen Mac can. What it helps with is the one-app case and the time after.

When the pointer still moves, Foreman opens from any app with Control-Shift-Escape. Its Processes page shows each app’s CPU, Memory, Disk, Network and GPU use, and a row reads “Not responding” when macOS has marked the app as hung. End Task force quits a hung app at once. For an app that is still answering, End Task asks it to quit the normal way first, so it can offer to save.

Afterwards, the Performance page shows memory pressure and the apps using the most memory, and App History shows what each running app has used since it opened. Foreman does not keep history after an app quits, and its live graphs cover only the last minute, so it cannot show you what happened before a freeze and a restart. It is best used when you can see the problem building: a Mac getting slower, a fan getting loud, one app with a high figure.

Foreman costs $12 once and runs free for 24 hours, so you can see whether it shows you the culprit on your own Mac.

The short version

1. Does the pointer move? If yes, it is one app.
2. Wait a full minute.
3. Option-Command-Escape, pick the app, Force Quit.
4. Only if the whole Mac is frozen for several minutes, hold the power button until the Mac switches off.
5. Afterwards, check free disk space in System Settings > General > Storage, and look for the one app or device that keeps causing it.