Mac Frozen? How to Unfreeze a Stuck Screen and App

Your Mac stops responding. The beachball spins, your clicks do nothing, and the screen just sits there. Most of the time this is one stuck app rather than a dead machine, and you can usually clear it in seconds once you know which problem you have.

This guide covers both cases: a single hung app you can force quit, and a fully locked Mac that needs a force restart. The keys and menus below are for current macOS (Sonoma and Sequoia).

What "frozen" actually means

People say "frozen" for two very different situations, and the right fix depends on which one you are facing.

One app is hung. A single program stops responding. The beachball (the rainbow wait cursor) shows up when you hover over that app, but the rest of the system keeps running. You can switch to other apps, the clock still ticks, and the pointer still moves. This is the common case. The app is usually waiting on a stuck task, a slow disk, or a network call.

The whole Mac is locked. Nothing responds at all. The pointer is stuck or will not move with the trackpad, the menu bar clock has stopped, keyboard shortcuts do nothing, and even ⌥⌘⎋ brings up no window. This is rarer. It points to a deeper problem: a kernel hang, a driver issue, or hardware under heavy strain.

How to tell which one you have

Run these three checks before you do anything drastic.

1. Move the pointer. Slide a finger on the trackpad or move the mouse. If the pointer moves, the system is alive and you are dealing with one hung app.
2. Watch the menu bar clock. If the time in the top-right corner still advances minute by minute, macOS is running. A frozen clock is a strong sign the whole Mac is locked.
3. Try to switch apps. Hold ⌘ and tap Tab. If the app switcher appears, you can move to a working app, which tells you the problem is isolated to one program.

Pointer moves and clock ticks? Go to the force-quit section. Everything dead? Skip ahead to the force-restart section.

Force quit the hung app

When one app is stuck but the rest of macOS works, force quitting that app is the fix. There are three reliable ways in, from fastest to most thorough.

1. The Force Quit window (Option-Command-Escape)

Press ⌥⌘⎋ (Option-Command-Escape). The Force Quit Applications window appears on top of everything, and it usually works even when a stuck app is hogging the screen. You can also open it from the Apple menu () → Force Quit.

1. Find the frozen app in the list. It often reads (not responding) next to its name.
2. Select it and click Force Quit.
3. Confirm in the dialog.

This is the shortcut worth memorizing. Our force quit keyboard shortcut guide covers it and a few related key combos in more detail.

2. The Dock, with Option

If you would rather not leave what you are doing, quit the app straight from the Dock.

1. Right-click (or Control-click) the app's icon in the Dock.
2. Hold the Option key. The Quit entry changes to Force Quit.
3. Click Force Quit while still holding Option.

Same result as the Force Quit window, with one less step. Useful when only one program is misbehaving. We go deeper in our guide on what to do when a single app will not quit.

3. Activity Monitor

For a process that will not even appear in the Force Quit list, or a background process that is the real problem, open Activity Monitor (in Applications → Utilities, or search for it in Spotlight with ⌘Space).

1. Type the app or process name in the search box at the top-right.
2. Select it and click the Stop button (the octagon with an X) in the toolbar.
3. Choose Force Quit in the prompt.

Activity Monitor also shows CPU and memory, so it is the best place to spot a process pinned at high usage and dragging the Mac down. Our Activity Monitor guide walks through reading those numbers. If a process shrugs off every one of these methods, see what to do when force quit is not working. For the full escalation ladder, the main force quit guide covers it end to end.

When the WHOLE Mac is frozen

If the pointer is stuck, the clock has stopped, and no shortcut does anything, you cannot force quit your way out. The whole system is locked, so you have to restart it. Do it carefully.

Step 1: wait a moment

Give it 30 to 60 seconds first. A Mac that looks dead is sometimes just buried under heavy disk or memory work, often right after a big update, a Time Machine backup, or Spotlight reindexing. The beachball can clear on its own and save you a hard restart. If the pointer suddenly moves again, quit the heavy app the normal way.

Step 2: force restart with the power button

If waiting does nothing, force the Mac off, then back on.

1. Press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds. Keep holding until the screen goes black and the Mac powers off completely.
2. Wait a few seconds.
3. Press the power button once to turn it back on.

Where the power button is depends on your Mac:

• MacBook with Touch ID: the power button is the Touch ID key in the top-right corner of the keyboard. Press and hold it for the full 10 seconds. A quick tap only locks the screen, so keep holding.
• MacBook without Touch ID: hold the dedicated power key, or the Control + power button combination, until it shuts off.
• iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio: the power button is on the back of the machine. Press and hold it for about 10 seconds.

A forced shutdown cuts power without letting apps close cleanly, so treat it as a last resort. It will not damage your Mac, but you can lose unsaved work in open documents. Save it for a fully locked machine.

How to avoid losing work

Both force quitting and force restarting skip the normal save-and-close routine, so unsaved changes can vanish. A few habits soften the blow.

• Reopen the app and look for a recovery prompt. Pages, Numbers, Keynote, TextEdit, and many others keep autosave and version history, so they often offer to restore the document you were editing.
• Check the Recovered or AutoRecovery folder. Office apps in particular drop a recovered copy when they reopen after a crash.
• Turn on autosave and iCloud. With iCloud Drive and autosave on, most Apple and modern apps write changes continuously, so a freeze costs you seconds of work instead of an afternoon.
• Save often by hand. A quick ⌘S habit is still the cheapest insurance there is.

The instant way to kill a hung app: MEGAKILL

When one app keeps freezing and you are tired of the Force Quit routine, MEGAKILL turns it into one click. It is a macOS menu-bar app for macOS 14 and up. Hold its shortcut (⌥⌘, Option-Command, by default and configurable, but never Control-Option-Command) and your cursor becomes a DOOM-style shotgun. Click a hung app's Dock icon or its window to force-quit it instantly, or right-click to reload it in two shots. There is more for fun: a wound mode, pinned cleanup, a way to close stray floating pop-ups, kill streaks, and real shotgun sounds you can toggle off. Finder, the Dock, and critical system processes are shielded, so you cannot blast something you need. MEGAKILL is a notarized Developer ID app distributed outside the App Store, it auto-updates through Sparkle, and it can launch at login. Your first 100 kills are free, then a one-time 1.99 EUR unlocks the rest. It is a tribute to DOOM (1993), not affiliated with id Software.

A note on prevention

Freezes that keep coming back usually have a fixable cause. Keep macOS and your apps current, since a stubborn freeze is often patched in a later version. Watch your free storage, because a nearly full startup disk makes the whole Mac stutter and stall. If a single app is the repeat offender, reinstall it or check for a known issue. And if random freezes spread across many apps, run Apple Diagnostics (restart and hold D on an Intel Mac, or check during startup on Apple silicon) to rule out failing memory or a dying drive.