freezemacmacos
What to do when my Mac is frozen?
For some reason my Mac got frozen. I cannot even see the mouse cursor and nothings working. What should I do now? I know long press in power button will shut my Mac down but is there any other way like Windows Ctrl + Alt + Del?
I used to deal with this type of situation occasionally, and when it's a general UI freeze, not one particular window being unresponsive, then there's nothing I've found (no process you can kill) that can deal with the problem, other than killing WindowServer. That should cause the session to be logged out.
However, in this particular case, since killing WindowServer didn't return the system to a usable state, I suspect it was doomed anyway.
With regard to the best possible recovery, one thing to note is that it may be possible to cleanly shut down individual applications from SSH:
osascript -e 'tell application "TextEdit" to quit'
Normal GUI applications will not save their files etc. when killed, but will when given this quit event. Of course, if the application pops up a dialog when you tell it to quit, this doesn't help. And if osascript itself hangs, then the Apple Event dispatch system is hung...
Try telling the Task Manager to always be on top.
Next time you should be able to view it. Also try Alt-Tab-ing out of the app/game, so the focus is on something different.
I tested it on Windows 8 on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, which is a game you need a special program to minimise :D .
(my Windows is in Slovak)
Best Answer
If a computer is totally frozen then you have no alternative but to long-hold to force power off.
This is the same for almost any OS.
The usual indicator on Mac is that not only the app is frozen but you can't access Force Quit & the menu bar clock has stopped. I'd always wait at least 2 or 3 minutes just to be sure it wasn't temporarily too busy to respond, during which time I keep a constant eye on the clock. I actually always have my clock showing seconds precisely for this type of occasion, under potentially extreme processor conditions. Often a process will recover, meaning you don't have to hard power-off & risk losing work.
Patience is a virtue ;)
On a Mac, you should always try to ascertain if it is indeed the entire OS - which is rare - or a single application which has hung.
Holding Cmd ⌘ Opt ⌥ Esc will bring up the Force Quit Applications dialog. This should override any process & come to the front, no matter what else has happened to the Mac. It should highlight any process that is not responding & allow you to force quit it. In many cases this will be sufficient to return to normal operation.
Only if this dialog will not pop up should you consider the Mac itself to be hung [though still keep an eye on the clock, to be sure].
Additional notes -
If you suspect it has hung, don't go clicking around like mad trying to get it to respond. If it's merely been too busy for a minute, then it will suddenly catch up & try to do all the things you were clicking blindly… not necessarily with the best results.
If you are in a fullscreen app & cannot see the menu bar, move the cursor hard to the top of the screen [even if you can't see it] & wait. if the menu bar does eventually drop into view, the Mac hasn't hung.