Mac

What is the spinning colored ball on my Mac?


Spinning Ball: What It Means When you see the spinning colored beach ball, it means the Mac is slowing down due to low resources, such as memory, hard drive or processing power. It’s telling you to wait while the computer chugs through its work. Sometimes, it means the app is “frozen” and unable to continue.

How do I get rid of the colorful circle on my Mac?

You can also force quit an app by right-clicking its icon in the Dock, holding the Option key on your keyboard, and then selecting “Force Quit.” Alternatively, you can launch Activity Monitor, find the app, and then quit the process from there.

Why do I keep getting the spinning beach ball on my Mac?

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.

How do I get rid of the colorful circle on my Mac?

You can also force quit an app by right-clicking its icon in the Dock, holding the Option key on your keyboard, and then selecting “Force Quit.” Alternatively, you can launch Activity Monitor, find the app, and then quit the process from there.

Why am I getting the Rainbow wheel on my Mac?

Install more RAM The spinning wheel of death can appear when your Mac is using virtual memory and the storage space is limited. The more physical RAM you have, the less your Mac will need to resort to virtual memory. So installing more RAM can fix the spinning color wheel problem.

What causes spinning rainbow circle mean Mac?

When you see the spinning colored beach ball, it means the Mac is slowing down due to low resources, such as memory, hard drive or processing power. It’s telling you to wait while the computer chugs through its work.

What is the spinning beach ball of death?

What does the colored spinning wheel mean?

The spinning rainbow wheel is a common macOS wait cursor. This wheel comes up when an application that you’re running doesn’t respond for a few moments.

Your Mac may be slow due to an outdated macOS or an overloaded cache. Malware can also infect your Mac and slow it down by hogging system resources. If your Mac is old, it might struggle to run modern software, and you may need to replace it.

What happens when force quit doesn’t work on Mac?

If you still cannot quit an app with force quit, you can turn to use Activity Monitor, which allows you to force quit any frozen apps. Step 1 Locate and open Activity Monitor in Finder > Applications > Utilities. Step 2 Open the CPU tab and find the app that won’t quit in the process list, then select it.

How do I get rid of the colorful circle on my Mac?

You can also force quit an app by right-clicking its icon in the Dock, holding the Option key on your keyboard, and then selecting “Force Quit.” Alternatively, you can launch Activity Monitor, find the app, and then quit the process from there.

Why do I keep getting the spinning beach ball on my Mac?

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.

What does the spinning circle on my computer mean?

A spinning cursor means the system is busy. Since the operating system is made up of hundreds or thousands of independent modules (programs), you may see the spinning blue circle appear often, especially if you power on or reboot the system.

How do you restart a frozen Mac?

How to Force Restart Your Mac. Press and hold down the Command (⌘) and Control (Ctrl) keys along with the power button (or the ‌Touch ID‌ / Eject button, depending on the Mac model) until the screen goes blank and the machine restarts.

What does the Apple pinwheel mean?

The spinning pinwheel is a variation of the mouse pointer arrow, used in Apple’s macOS to indicate that an application is busy.

Why is my Mac so slow and unresponsive?

If you find your Mac is running slowly, there are a number of potential causes that you can check. Your computer’s startup disk may not have enough free disk space. To make disk space available, you can move files to another disk or an external storage device, then delete files you no longer need on the startup disk.

What does the colored spinning wheel mean?

The spinning rainbow wheel is a common macOS wait cursor. This wheel comes up when an application that you’re running doesn’t respond for a few moments.

What is the spinning beach ball of death?

What does the spinning circle on my computer mean?

A spinning cursor means the system is busy. Since the operating system is made up of hundreds or thousands of independent modules (programs), you may see the spinning blue circle appear often, especially if you power on or reboot the system.

How do I force my Mac to restart?

How to Force Restart Your Mac. Press and hold down the Command (⌘) and Control (Ctrl) keys along with the power button (or the ‌Touch ID‌ / Eject button, depending on the Mac model) until the screen goes blank and the machine restarts.

What do you do if your Mac is not responding?

Choose Restart from the Apple menu, or. On some computers, you may press the Power button on the keyboard, then click Restart in the dialog box that appears. If your computer has an Apple Pro Keyboard, press Control-Eject, then click Restart in the dialog box that appears.

How do you fix a frozen Mac?

Press the left side Shift + Ctrl + Opt keys and power button at the same time. Hold all four keys for 10 seconds. Release all the keys and the power button at the same time. Turn your Mac back on.

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