You will find the power button or blank Touch ID sensor cum power button at the top-right corner of your Mac’s keyboard. One of the easiest and most common ways to unfreeze your Mac is by pressing the power button for a few seconds until the screen turns black. Regardless of which macOS or Mac line you are running on (Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, iMac) or the chipset you are using, all the below steps and methods are the same. If your Mac is unresponsive and frozen, the only way to fix the issue is by forcing a restart or shutdown. Forcing a Restart or Shutdown on a Frozen Mac: What You Need to Know With this out of the way, let’s proceed to the methods.

Otherwise, your existing data will be removed.Įnsure that external storage devices, such as external hard drives or USB drives, are appropriately ejected before forcing a restart or shutdown.Ĭonsider trying other troubleshooting methods, such as force quitting an unresponsive app or using the Activity Monitor to close a frozen process before attempting a force restart or shutdown.īe aware that forcing a restart or shutdown can cause unsaved changes to be lost and may corrupt the filesystem. If your Mac is responsible, try to save any unsaved work before a forced restart or shutdown. Things to Know Before Forcing a Restart or Shut Down on Macīefore forcing a restart or shutdown on your frozen Mac, there are a few things to consider: Whether you’re dealing with a stuck application or a system-wide freeze, we’ve got you covered.

Besides, there are specific signs that determine whether your Mac is frozen, such as an unresponsive mouse, trackpad, or keyboard, unresponsive apps, and so on. You may use hard shutdown, PRAM reset, etc. There are several ways to force restart or shut down your Mac when it’s frozen.

Shortcut key to shutdown mac