Check your background activity in the Activity Monitor.

Once you get it going again, see if any of the following troubleshooting tips can keep this from happening as often. Try the suggestions above to reboot your Mac. If your screen freezes and you see a motionless spinning wheel on the screen, it could mean the system has given up on a program.

Your Mac will visually let you know it is trouble. Keep reading to see what you can do to keep programs running. If your Mac freezes regularly, it may be related to how you use it. Unlike Windows, your progress is not always saved when you force a program to close. However, if an app does not respond to any commands, you may need to use “Force Quit.” This is a normal occurrence, and you can use the CMD and Q keys to close the program when you’re done. Find the program you want to close in your Mac dock.Īt times a glitch may cause a program to pause for just a few seconds.The dock is similar to the “Task Manager” on a Windows device. Select the application you want to close.Ī third option to close an unresponsive program on a Mac is using the dock. The “Force Quit” pop-up window will appear.On some Macs, the Option key is the Alt key. Press the CMD+Option+Escape keys at the same time.These are steps to follow if you’re not on the home screen: However, you can open “Force Quit” from whichever screen you are on. You may not be able to get to the home screen if your Mac is frozen. Select the program that has stopped from the list.Choose “Force Quit” from the drop-down menu.Tap the Apple logo (at the top-left corner of the screen).It is known as a “force quit.” Perform this method if rebooting Mac using the Apple menu as follows: There are a few ways to utilize this function on Mac. Afterward, the device will shut down and restart. The equivalent to this feature in Mac is an override which forces the offending program to shut down. When the computer restarts, the autosave function rescues the work you had in progress. Using the Control+Alt+Delete keys in Windows activates a menu with utilities that allow you to safely close programs. Read on for options that are available to use if your Mac gets frozen in time. You can avoid powering down your computer to get your Mac working again because the iOS actually has its own version of the Control+Alt+Delete shortcut. Your only choice seems to be to turn off the power to your computer and start over. By now, you know that the same keys you used with Windows do nothing for your Mac. However, on a rare occasion, your Mac may suddenly stop working unexpectedly.

Delete key on mac