I am on 10.14.4, the same thing was happening at least on 10.14.1.
Laptop: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)
So the problem is if I open "Apple Menu" in top left corner and click any of the following options:
- Shut Down…
- Restart…
- Log out My Name
nothing happens.
sudo reboot works fine, holding the power button works fine, but that's not a graceful shutdown and I would like to avoid it, it also prevents updates from being applied if shut down this way.
Also when I go to Preferences > Software Updates > click Update Now then a dialog pops up with an option "Restart Now". Clicking it does nothing similar to Apple Menu.
What I tried:
- I checked the Console application for logs (nothing relevant in there)
- I checked /var/log/system.log, I checked /var/log/shutdown_monitor.log (nothing relevant in there)
- SMC reset
- NVRAM reset
- Created new fresh user, to see if it's a problem with my user account (the issue persists)
- I disabled all the login items and bunch of startup services (java updates, and bunch of similar non-system stuff)
Best Answer
This looks suspiciously like a problem with permissions. Open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and fix permissions on your drive then reboot and see if it works.
EDIT: After comment, repair permissions is not available anymore in newer macos releases.
Then you will have to reinstall macos, I am afraid.