The spinning wait cursor or spinning disc pointer — where your mouse pointer becomes the rotating color wheel or “spinning beach ball” seen above — generally indicates that your Mac® is engaged in a processor-intensive activity.
Why does my Mac keep Beachballing?
The Mac uses free hard drive space to store information as it processes tasks. If the free space on your computer falls below roughly 15- 25 GB, you’ll encounter the spinning beach ball.
What is Beachballing?
(computing, slang, intransitive) To hang; to stop responding to user input; (used of Mac computers, where this is indicated by a spinning coloured cursor like a beach ball). quotations ▼
