macReports

Apple iOS Mac OS X Reports , Help and News

  • How to
  • News
  • Not working?
  • Tips and Tricks
  • Guides
You are here: Home / How to / macOS Mojave Freezes or Stops Responding, Fix

macOS Mojave Freezes or Stops Responding, Fix

Last updated on November 26, 2018 By Serhat Kurt 38 Comments

It is rare but your Mac can freeze and become unresponsive. While the macOS Mojave update brings a lot of great features, users are reporting number of issues, such as the battery drain problem. One other problem that’s affecting many Mac users is the entire computer freezing when attempting to login. Are you having freezing issues too during or after login. Is your Mac unresponsive and misbehaving? This article explains what you can do to fix this problem. These tips may help you resolve your issue.

Try backing up your Mac before trying the tips below.

  1. If your Mac freezes after you login, some single app may be causing the problem. Simply press the Command+Option+Escape keys together (or click Force Quit from the Apple menu). Force Quit Applications menu will appear. Select the unresponsive app or apps and then click Force Quit. Force Quit Apps
  2. Start up your Mac in safe mode. This is one of the most common steps when troubleshooting your Mac. If your Mac is not starting normally, safe mode is the next step you should try to troubleshoot. To start your Mac in safe mode, follow the instructions below:
    1. Turn off your Mac
    2. Turn on your computer and immediately after (immediately after you hear the start up sound) the computer is powered on, press and hold the Shift key.
    3. Release the Shift key when you see the login screen
    4. If your computer does not freeze in safe mode, restart your Mac normally, without pressing the Shift key.
  3. If safe mode does not help you, you may try macOS recovery. Here is how:
    1. Turn off your Mac
    2. Turn on your Mac and immediately after press and hold the Command – R keys together. Keep holding the keys until you see the Apple logo. Release the keys when you see the Apple logo.
    3. You will see the macOS utilities window
    4. Select Disk Utility and click ContinuemacOS utilities disk utility
    5. Select View > Show All Devices
    6. Select your start up disk
    7. Then click the First Aid button and then click Run
    8. Then restart your Mac normally by choosing Restart from the Apple meu.
  4. If you are still having your problem, reinstall macOS. Here is how:
    1. Turn off your Mac
    2. Turn on your Mac and immediately after press and hold the Command and R keys together until you see the Apple logo.
    3. macOS Utilities window will appear
    4. Select Reinstall macOS and follow the instructions.

See also: Mac White Screen

Filed Under: How to Tagged With: macOS, Mojave

Comments

  1. ROBERT PATRICK HARTLE says

    November 26, 2018 at 9:39 pm

    Oh stop it people! I’ve been using Mohave since the day released including on an OLD MacBook Pro Mid 2012. I use all current versions of software on this OLD MacBOOK Pro including Adobe CC 2018 with no issues. I have it maxed out with 16GB ram and a Samsung 850 Pro SSD. Stop your whining and get some work done… more fake news. The System Freezes are probably people having 10 Porn Sites open at once. Get your hands out of pants and your Mac will work better!

    Reply
    • Hawk says

      December 13, 2018 at 4:26 am

      ….., you don’t know jack! so many people report this to apple! try not to talk, breath instead its really good for your brain! it helps your brain to shut the f……

      Reply
      • Don Richards says

        April 2, 2019 at 3:05 pm

        Wow, maybe try a more constructive response next time. Although his response is clearly naive and completely off, your response is only making it difficult to help.

        Reply
    • Clay says

      March 2, 2019 at 3:48 pm

      Robert, glad to hear you’re not experiencing problems but many are, including me. I’m an Apple fan and have used MacBooks and iMacs for 15 years. Have never encountered any serious problems with any Apple OS prior to Mojave.

      Apple has yet to certify a GPU driver from Nvidia which is causing hangs and poor performance with some MacBooks like mine from 2014-2015. My MacBook Pro hangs and freezes at least 5x a day.

      As an aside, many in design communities are also scratching their heads with Apple’s decision to remove Cover Flow from Finder view. Cover Flow was the best way to view thousands of large image files including RAW formats. Not a show stopper, but frustrating on top of performance issues I’ve never experienced from Apple.

      Reply
    • Don Richards says

      April 2, 2019 at 3:13 pm

      Robert, I also have maxed my system out but with 64GB (not 16GB) ram and a 1TB Aura Pro X SSD and also am experiencing unusual stuttering. My system is in a university enterprise environment running several applications that push both the CPU and GPU, not something lightweight like Photoshop. As far as the nature of the sites I have loaded, stuff like stack overflow, localhost, and some Google docs. Not really what you were describing. I would suggest in the future not to be so dismissive. You use of a computer is only one of many ways to run a system. For some of us, we use our systems at capacity for over 8 hours a day, not just when we click “export” in PS.

      Reply
    • Ron Jeremy says

      September 17, 2019 at 2:51 am

      Fine removing hands now but I will be back at it very soon 😜

      Reply
  2. blastar says

    November 29, 2018 at 12:55 pm

    What a bullshit, Xcode is enough to make it freezing on MBP 2015

    Reply
  3. Agris says

    December 24, 2018 at 2:15 pm

    All was fine for 3 years using mac, now it freezes alos every day and helps only hard turn off and then on, looks like safari is the reasnon, but not shure

    Reply
    • Rnd says

      December 25, 2018 at 3:14 pm

      Same here. Leaveing idle for a few hours and when I back, just beachball. On force quit, application window stays on screen. Cannot quit, cannot start anything. Only power of helps. MBP 2016 TB

      Reply
      • Mike says

        January 11, 2019 at 7:26 pm

        exact same thing happening here. hours later, spinning beachball on certain apps. Try to open activity monitor, and it never opens. Every app I try to open not responding.

        I happen to have had Activity Monitor already open just now and was able to see that coreservicesuiagent was not responding… along with chrome and dropbox… then I tried to open another another program and that quickly turned to (not responding) as well.

        Also, same as above, force quitting app leaves the application window on the screen.

        Reply
        • Kino no Tabi says

          March 9, 2019 at 12:09 pm

          I thought I’m the only one but I’m experiencing the exact problem as yours Mike

          Reply
          • Rosie says

            May 11, 2019 at 1:44 pm

            I am having the same problems on my new 2019 iMac (3 weeks in from delivery). I never had the same problems on my last iMac which was running High Sierra. This one quits while mid application, then nothing else responds. I can Force Quit using the Command + Option + Shift + Esc key, but then it goes back to Finder window which is also unresponsive, and requires a hard shutdown and then me restarting it again. Does this at least 5 – 6 times a day. This Mac has been pimped up with all highest specs. I would have thought for almost eight and a half thousand dollars I would have got a better machine than this.

  4. Pablo says

    December 30, 2018 at 12:07 pm

    The same with me.
    I run Mojave on MacBook Pro 2018 13″.
    Last few days I was editing video on iMovie a lot (not a porn movies :D) and it crashes even 4-5 times a day. Eventually it crashed my project in iMovie – all the clips where disconnected from the source and I had to spent 8h to get this project to the same point when it crashed.
    Also leaving Macbook for a night to sync timemachine with NAS server (all apps are closed) fails. After few hours my Macbook is turned off. Each time it hangs it turns off after few minutes.

    Apple – work on it.

    Reply
    • Rod says

      January 16, 2019 at 3:27 am

      Have all these problems on my iMac, I have done all of the above…same non responsive OS utilities. So what is the fix?

      Reply
  5. Adrian S says

    January 15, 2019 at 3:09 pm

    I have just updated to Mojave WISHED I hadn’t runs out of memory all the time imovie hangs both browsers are inoperable updated pages can’t cope with it found a memory leak while using audacity with it open more than one youtube tab and it freaks out mail is impossible to accessing under about 10 mins. For me and I can only speak personally it has been a complete disaster. It seems to me that beta testing is only done on the most up to date machines NO TEST at all in my opinion. This machine now operates like oh I don’t know Windows Vista or worse. All those bright sparks at Apple have totally lost the plot. Apple used to be so much better than this. I guess they took on unemployed Microsoft engineers and we are ALL paying the price

    Reply
  6. david bare says

    January 17, 2019 at 5:03 pm

    that fucking beachball is a pain in the arse i have tried to sort it out seversl times but it is still fucking me up my last effort will be to reinstsll macos mojave if thst does nlt sork i eill go bsck to pcs and necver use a apple mac again

    Reply
  7. Paul says

    January 28, 2019 at 6:00 pm

    My thanks to Macreports for their great Mojave freeze fix suggestions. I tried the first step and Safe Mode seemed to be problem free, so rebooted and freezing seems cured (so far). My 2012 MacBook back on form now, apart from the boot cycle which is still twice as long as its original zippy, straight-out-of-the-box, performance.

    Reply
  8. Cynde says

    February 8, 2019 at 12:48 am

    Late 2015 imac freezes all the time right after installing Mojave. Never happened in High Sierra. Did all the “fixes” before I even read this, including a clean install. NOT FIXED and Apple doesn’t know what else to tell me. Nice. Not.

    Reply
  9. Angry mole says

    February 22, 2019 at 9:10 am

    Mojave crashed my mid 2012 macbook pro. No fixes, third weekend in a row I’ve fucking wasted trying to fix the fucking thing. Deadlines fast approaching and I haven’t been able to work… cheers assholes.

    Reply
  10. Beau says

    March 15, 2019 at 3:46 am

    I’m about to Throw my iMac in the bin!
    I’m over the constant unresponsive apps & finder it’s doing my head in I’ve tried uninstalling Apps freeing up Ram,Removing old files you nam it I’ve tried whatever I can to Stop this Crap from continually wasting my time with it bullshit freezing.
    Since I purchase my iMac it’s been a constant struggle I thought making the move from my MacBook Pro to a desktop iMac would make life so much easier but It’s been the complete opposite, I’ve wasted too much time now trying to get things done I’m at my wits end.
    Soooo Over it.
    I really want to smash it That’s how fed up I am!

    Reply
    • Sue says

      April 15, 2019 at 3:04 pm

      Same … so much wasted time.
      Have started using work Dell laptop – so fast and never freezes. So so unhappy with IMac

      Reply
    • Rosie says

      May 11, 2019 at 1:49 pm

      I agree. People – DON’T upgrade to the latest (2019) iMac – the same thing is happening, and yet Apple can’t seem to work out any kind of fix for it. I’ve wasted just under eight and a half grand on a complete lemon. Buy any kind of PC and save your money. Mac’s have gone down the gurgles quality-wise since Steve Jobs left us,

      Reply
    • lumen says

      June 24, 2019 at 4:38 am

      Lol… you guys are funny but I feel your pain thought this was only happening to my imac but looks like its a much bigger issue… smdh. I think apple does this every now and then to get us to buy new machines like they did with updates for older iphones that slowed them to a crawl forcing many to purchase new ones!!!!

      Reply
  11. Paul Lanyi Jr. says

    May 8, 2019 at 1:05 am

    I just downloaded Mojave a couple days ago. Wish I had read All your comments first. Been nothing but rainbow wheels and screen freezes on my 2013 21 inch. In addition, my older 2009 24″ will not boot up. WTF ? I had been using the Yosemite OS. I Am Not Happy. And Fck That iTunes Disclaimer. Mr. Cook . . You ‘Know’ What You Can Do With That OS ! : >)

    Reply
    • Janette says

      June 8, 2019 at 9:17 pm

      Have you sorted it yet? I am having exactly the same problem

      Reply
  12. Janette Scharenborg says

    June 8, 2019 at 9:12 pm

    Hi guys and girls I have been having exactly the same problem after the last update in Mojave except for a different reason I was having the turning golf balls but no freezes, I was told if I put a new ssd in that would solve my problem with Mojave and make my computer a lot faster. I had a company come to my home and install the new ssd a total new install and then I added my files, then wait for it…… when starting up it freezes after nothing responding so force stop, even in disk utility I got the message could not unmount drive, I put a usb boot in and started it up from that then went into the disk utility to try and fix the issues then got a load of shit files warning: inode_val: object (oid 0x3000ca54f): invalid bsd_flags (0x10) loads of them. I was told this comes from one drive, so deleted one drive and have restarted loads of times but the problem remains. I also feel like throwing the damned thing out of the window.

    Reply
  13. David McComb says

    June 15, 2019 at 2:14 pm

    Fourteen years on new Mac laptops every three years. Always kept system up to date. But my 2018 MacBook Pro with Mojave is as reliable as stable as a Windows machine!! I thought my use of Parallels and Windows 10 was corrupting something. Now I realize it’s Mojave. Thanks for the info.

    Reply
  14. Mark Hudswell says

    June 17, 2019 at 4:48 pm

    Same problem here with a Late 2014 iMAC5K 27″ with 16GB, screen freezes but I don’t get the spinning ball. Watching the amount of free memory it starts to play up when it gets down to around 4GB free.

    The only way I have found to continue is to wait for it to come back, usually about 15 – 20 secs and I run a program called “Extreme Memory Clean” which will get me back to around 10GB free and it continues until the memory gets low again.

    No obvious program is causing this, Activity Monitor shows no obvious max CPU or memory by programs.

    Only been happening since Mojave.

    Reply
  15. Eli says

    June 21, 2019 at 5:13 pm

    Experiencing the same thing on my maxed out 15″ Mid 2012 Macbook Pro. Everything was working “fine” on Yosemite. I held back on updating the OS because I know how Apple tends to publish them before they’re actually ready (at least for a developer like me).

    Upgraded to Mojave a month ago and now periodically it hangs for 10-20 seconds at a time. It seems to be happening specficially when switching apps/windows, and I just tried to profile a process called WindowServer which seems to be causing CPU spikes. But when I was profiling it my machine almost completely froze for about 15 minutes. This is bullshit! I’m working on a deadline and dont have time to debug my damn OS…

    Reply
  16. Kevin_y says

    July 14, 2019 at 10:06 am

    Apple has let the side down badly here. Now resorting to using Windows 10 PC for development until a fix. Cant even word process without locking up. An untenable solution does not get fixed with Cmd+Opt+Esc – just have to wait.
    10+ years largely problem-free. Quality has slipped badly in various aspects of the UI/OS in the past years. Not good enough for the money.

    Reply
  17. Gary Bau says

    August 17, 2019 at 6:37 am

    Every app is freezing ..
    iMac(2015)5K i7 32/1TB SSD
    High Sierra worked fine ..

    Reply
  18. Ted says

    August 21, 2019 at 8:27 pm

    my iMac has 10.13.2 I tried to download Mojave the message say ” an internal error occurred while preflighting your volume for APFS conversion”
    is this something I can correct?
    thank you

    Reply
  19. Jack says

    August 24, 2019 at 6:38 pm

    Anyone found solution for the problem? Same problem here, started happening recently may be after the recent Mojave fix.

    Reply
  20. alecail says

    August 26, 2019 at 5:53 pm

    Same here. Mac Mini Late 2014
    Random UI freeze. I can still move the windows, but everything is frozen inside (no updates on the content). The clock freezes. Just to collect some data, I let it run and it freezes up to 5 minutes then comes back to normal for a random duration. Nothing special running on the OS, just 2 random pages in a browser. I can’t even monitor what’s causing this with top or Activity Monitor because they won’t update the display when it freezes. I don’t think it’s a process causing this, it may be something really wrong with some hardware combination.

    Reply
  21. Anna says

    September 20, 2019 at 7:05 pm

    My iMac is fairly new (last 2015) and I have recently upgraded to Mojave. If I leave it running for short period, it freezes. I don’t get a spinning wheel, I don’t get anything. The mouse does not work. My only choice is to a force quit to reboot the computer. I thought maybe Firefox was the culprit. This happens a few times a day. The last time it did this I only had mail and firefox opened. Sure hope Apple comes up with a fix to this problem.

    Reply
  22. Peter says

    October 3, 2019 at 5:28 pm

    I’m experiencing continuous crashes on my MacBook Pro (mid 2015), macOS Mojave 10.14.6. I use this computer only for work, the only thing I did 2 weeks ago was the update of the op.system, nothing else changed. During typing something the keyboard suddenly freezes, the mouse is sometimes still alive (sometimes not), but even having mouse I can’t access anything, the UI is not responding. Sometimes it freezes for 20-30 seconds then it comes back, but sometimes it doesn’t come back and I need to hard-reboot the machine. Fuck you Apple! My windows desktop is more reliable now!

    Reply
  23. R says

    October 8, 2019 at 8:15 pm

    Sorry – October.

    Reply
  24. Brian says

    October 26, 2019 at 10:47 am

    Same problem here. I upgraded from Sierra straight to Mojave and immediately started having issues. Thought maybe a clean reinstall of Mojave would solve the problem but no. Problem often happens when I leave the macbook for a while – when I return I find everything is frozen, even the clock has stopped though the mouse can still move. Now weighting up upgrading to Catalina but also wondering if I’ll create more problems than I solve by so doing.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Follow us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
Got a tip for us? Email us

Recent Comments

  • Barry on macOS Catalina: How To Change The Login Screen Background
  • Diego on Mac Catalina Wi-Fi Problems, Fix
  • Stefan Kögel on Safari kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork Error, Blank Page Fix
  • Allen on Can’t Rearrange Apps On Home Screen? Fix
  • Vonn on Update Apple ID Settings (macOS Catalina), Fix

Latest Posts

How To Hide Your Caller ID When Making Phone Calls On iPhone

You can make phone calls without giving out your phone number. The purpose of this article is to show you how you can hide your number when calling a person on your iPhone. This will let you make anonymous phone calls! There can be various reasons to not want your phone number showing up. For example, you […]

The Finder Can’t Quit Because An Operation Is Still In Progress On An iOS Device

Do you see the following message when you want to restart or turn off your Mac? This article explains how you can fix when you are unable to turn off and the Mac displays the “The Finder can’t quit because an operation is still in progress on an iOS device” error message. If the Finder […]

How To Optimize And Extend The Battery Life On iPhone

Your iPhone battery life depends on a lot of different factors. How you use your device greatly affects the battery life of your device. iPhones use lithium-ion batteries which they chemically age and they get less powerful. The purpose of this article is to teach you how to get the best out of your battery. […]

How To Delete Photo Albums On iPhone and Mac

This article explains how you can delete photo albums on your iPhone and Mac. Do you have too many albums that you want to delete some of them? Or if you have a lot of albums that you never open, then this article is for you. The Photos app lets you organize pictures and videos […]

How To Show Hidden Files On Your Mac

All computer systems, including macOS, contain hidden files and folders. Your Mac hides some files and folders by default. Your Mac is configured to not display hidden files. In general, you should not touch, move or edit these hidden files. These are important system-related files and folders and they perform some essential and sometimes critical functions. macOS stores system […]

Pages

  • Apple Complaints
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Statement
  • Support macReports
  • Terms of Use

Tags

AirPods Apple Car Apple Company Apple ID Apple Music Apple TV Apple Watch Apps App Store Backup Black Screen Bluetooth Catalina FaceTime gmail iCloud iMessage iMessages iOS iOS 9 iOS 10 iPad iPhone iTunes Location Services Mac Mac Battery macOS Mail Mail App Maps Messages Notifications Pages PDF Photos Safari Screen screenshot Siri Spotlight Search Turkey Update Wi-Fi Windows

Copyright © 2019 / macReports

This website uses cookies. By navigating around this site you consent to cookies being stored on your machine.Accept