Before we get our hands dirty, here’s a word of warning. If you’re wondering how to reboot a MacBook Pro, bear in mind it’s the last resort when all other methods to unfreeze your Mac had failed. Don’t try it too often as it may harm your system. No question, your Mac can handle rapid power losses and your hardware most likely won’t be hurt. What’s at risk though, is your data because each time you force reboot a Mac it affects the consistency of the file system. Now that you’ve been warned, let’s go.
Be sure to uncheck the ‘re-open windows when restarting’ option when you are shutting down or restarting, otherwise any apps you have left open when you are shutting down or restarting will just restart when you start your Mac (in my case a Mac mini) again. Hope that helps. Andy Breakspear. If your Mac continues to fail to boot, follow Apple’s instructions on creating an external Mac startup disk. It may be worth restarting your Mac in Safe Mode, then trying to install macOS 10.15. If you’d like to stop an app from automatically starting, follow steps 1-3, and highlight the app that you wish to remove and click the ‘-‘ sign to remove the app. If you’d like an app to startup in hidden mode, then check the Hide box next to the name of the app under the Login Items tab. Once you completed the steps, every time you access your account apps will open automatically. If you want an app to start maximized, just click the maximize button, and then the app will remember.
Symptoms your frozen Mac needs a force restart
Applications are not responding
Pointer is not responsive
Loud fan noise
The screen goes black
Mac unable to restart
Can you move the cursor? If yes, try this
Before you force restart a Mac, it’s always recommended to first try a software solution.
Go to the Apple menu Choose Restart Click Restart in the menu that appears
Two ways to force restart a Mac
The simplest method: hold down the Power button till your Mac shuts down. Press the button again to restart it.
If your Mac hangs for good and the pointer is inactive: Hold down Control + Command while pressing the Power button.
This is an alternative key combination to force restart a Mac. By the way, if you are on an iMac, the Power button is found on the back of your Mac. Voila!
Is Shut Down any different from Restart?
The difference between Shut Down and Restart is quite self-explanatory. When you perform a restart, your Mac will turn on again loading its previously active apps. As for shut down, your Mac won’t start until you press the Power button again. Interestingly, all new Macs have an automatic reboot feature built-in. So even if you sit and do nothing, your frozen Mac would eventually reboot by itself, though it takes a bit of patience.
How to force shut down a frozen Mac
If you need to force shut down a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, all you need is again to press a Power button on your Mac’s keyboard.
Press and hold Power button for 2 seconds Choose Restart, Sleep or Shut Down in the menu that appears
If you don’t want to reload the baggage of your previously opened apps, tick off “Reopen windows when logging back in”. We do recommend you to deselect this option when your Mac is slow in order to lighten the weight on your RAM.
If your Mac won’t shut down:
Press and hold Power button for about 6 seconds Hold the button until the Mac shuts down.
Needless to say that when you force restart a Mac all your unsaved projects may be lost. It’s unfair, we know.
Why does my Mac keep freezing?
The obvious explanation is your Mac lacks memory. Or to put another way, there are too many active processes running on your Mac. First off, go to Activity Monitor to check your memory usage.
Go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor Click the Memory tab
Now, look into how heavily your Memory is loaded. Quit apps that eat up too much memory for no reason. While this may work as a temporary solution, it doesn’t stop your Mac from freezing up again. You can either force reboot your Mac each time or opt for a radical solution. Below are a few more ideas you can try.
More ways to fix a frozen Mac
Restart your Mac in the Diagnostics mode
Shut down your Mac and reboot while pressing D key. Within the menu that appears, launch the Apple Diagnostics tool. This will check your Mac’s drive for errors. From then, follow the prompts to finish the diagnostics.
Clean up your Mac
Remove old unused apps, system junk, and pervasive browser extensions. For this purpose, try running CleanMyMac application on your Mac.
It’s quite effective in removing all junk from your Mac and has a number of helpful utilities, like RAM free up or app uninstaller. Download it for free here .
Reinstall your macOS
When Restart Mac Do Not Open Apps On Startup Mac
This is the most radical of all methods, that’s why it’s so effective.
Check out how to clean install macOS Sierra Instructions for macOS High Sierra How to clean install macOS Mojave
How to clean install macOS Catalina
When Restart Mac Do Not Open Apps On Startup Windows 10
Hope this guide has helped you. Before you force shut down this article, feel free to share it, using the social buttons below. Cheers!