Need to Restart a Mac That Has Froze? Here’s How

It’s extremely uncommon for a Mac to freeze or crash these days, but it can happen. What should you do if your Mac locks up and becomes completely unresponsive to the mouse and keyboard? The trick is to press and hold the power button until the Mac turns off. Wait 5 or 10 seconds, and press it again to turn the Mac back on. You will lose any unsaved changes if you do this, so use it only as a last resort when you can’t restart normally. Look for the power button on the back of a desktop Mac, and at the top right of the keyboard on most laptop Macs. For a recent MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, press and hold the Touch ID button.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Tips to Prevent a Frozen Screen:

The Mac is a very powerful and durable computer. It takes a lot for them to slow down, but when they do, it could be for several reasons. Like any computer, when your device has too much stored or too many apps open, it will start fighting for processing power. There are many other instances that can cause a frozen screen, but if you think you’re dealing with too much storage, there are a few ways to fix this.

First, check to see if storage is the problem by clicking the Apple icon > About this Mac > Storage. If there’s not too many GB left over, then it might be time to clear out your Mac.

To clean it up, drag or move unwanted files, photos, applications, etc. to the trash. Once they are deleted, the trash still needs to be emptied. To empty the trash, you can right click the trash icon and select “Empty Trash”, or you can go up to the Finder drop down menu and select “Empty Trash” from there.