Think of your Mac like your own brain. The more you’re worrying about, thinking about, and working on solving – the slower you’ll be to respond (and the more annoyed you’ll be) when someone asks you to do something else RIGHT NOW. 😉
Below are five options to make the beach ball go away. (Update Nov 21st 2018: New Macinhome YouTube video “why is my Mac so slow?! The top 12 reasons and fixes!” is live!)
1. Quit some apps.
Hold command and press tab a few times to see which apps are open, and switch between them. When you land on one you want to quit, keep holding command and press q. If you have an unfinished document, don’t worry. It’ll warn you and ask you to save before quitting it.
Imagine if we could do that with our worries and stresses. Just hit command-q! Ahhhhh. Relief!
2. Look in Activity Monitor.
Press command-spacebar to open Spotlight and type “Activity”. Press return to launch Activity Monitor. Look for anything that is using more than 10% of the CPU; that MAY be your culprit. If you know what it is and you don’t need it anymore, quit it. If you don’t know what it is, call us for help or put on your daredevil mask, hit Google, and get adventurous.
3. Restart.
This sounds cliché and very obvious but many people run their Mac for days without restarting. I recommend restarting every 2-3 days for most people or daily if you are doing a lot of multi-tasking with big apps. It’s like a cat nap for your Mac. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes if you use your Mac a lot, and some things don’t stop until you restart.
4. Close browser tabs.
If you have Safari and Chrome open with a lot of tabs, that can slow things down a lot. Close any tabs you aren’t using anymore with command-w. Keep your Mac and your apps running lean.
5. Install RAM or an SSD.
If all else fails you can find out what it will take to upgrade your Mac hardware with more memory (RAM) or a much faster SSD hard drive (solid state drive, also known as flash storage). Here’s a video example of the speed comparison, with creepy music. Two identical Macs; one with the regular hard drive and one with the SSD installed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aFwh3dT_E
If you want help just reach out.
Today while i tried to wake my mac, it did not allow me to log in. Instead a rainbow ball kept rolling for about 10-15 mins. I had to switch it off using the power key.
I want to know, why does this occur?
Kelly, sorry for the slow reply – good question. That can be a few different things, but usually it’s something unhappy either in an app, or in the Mac system, creating what we nerds would call a “runaway process”. It’s like if you have something on your mind and it’s consuming all your thoughts so you can’t do anything else. It’s possible to find which app or which thing in the system is doing that by running some tests and checking logs. Give us a call at 1-877-707-6227 if you want to have some help!
Googled for “sick of beachballs”. Found a thread from 2009. Here it is 2016. I’m still sick of beachballs. What is is about Apple?
Definitely understand your annoyance, Tim. Since the beachball is a symptom of your computer having to “pause and think”, it’s unlikely it’ll ever be gone completely. Every year as Macs get more powerful, so in turn the demands on them to “think harder” rise. C’est la vie!
How to stop the spinning wheel from spinning on my miles after login and can I go through terminal if that doesn’t work after I press the control commando mean command in r can I go through terminal
Hi – try my new “why is my Mac so slow” video perhaps? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXjWUgqWr_A&index=1&list=PL3pW5ct03msGVtzjrFk1JauXs2j2EpBHp
– Lucas
While the program capabilities are growing a lot, I am not using more than I used many years ago – without beach balls. This is BAD PROGRAMMING
Paul, I agree. Same setup. I’ve been using MacBooks since the early 2000’s. I always use the same programs: Chrome browser, Microsoft Office, Photoshop Elements, iTunes (not often). That’s about it. No matter the OS or hardware eventually I have to do a full reinstall of the original OS to regain performance. Upgrading to the latest Mac OS only makes things worse. (much worse since as noted above more things are shoved onto the OS).
This is a programing issue on the Apple side. Apparently Apple does not test their products years after release or read these comments.
Performance was better when Jobs was around. Things have definitely gone down since his death.
All of a sudden I began getting beach balls about 3 months ago. Driving me crazy. I have done everything I have read about doing and I called Apple and did what the tech told me to do. (Not a lot). What’s the deal? Did the 5 things in this article…nothing in #2 or #4. Is there anything else to do? Thanks.
Hey there… sorry to hear that. I would want to get hands on or remote to your Mac to see what’s up. Things I would check are if you have SATA or SSD hard drive. What’s eating CPU in the Activity Monitor. If you have a SATA drive, check for I/O errors or bad blocks on the hard drive. I would see if I can hone in on or isolate which specific app, doing what, is causing the beach ball. It’s almost always either processor running high (CPU % is high in Activity Monitor), internet transfer speeds which you can check from speedof.me or fast.com, or it’s hard drive read/write or health issues. There’s not much else it can be. Let me know if you want to book a remote session, the rate is currently $145/hr in half hour chunks. – Lucas
When I try to close all programmes, my OneDrive (under Finder) will not close and ball keeps turning… What else can I do to stop this?
I’d appreciate your help.
Hi Elaine! If this is still an issue for you it’s definitely something I can help with. First thing I would try is restarting the Mac… and you may need to “force quit” OneDrive. Do you need & use OneDrive? If not I can help you uninstall it. Just email us at solutions@macinhome.com and we can get a remote session going to solve that for you. It’s $72.50 CAD per half hour.
I have an older Apple MacBook (A1342) with High Sierra OS that I am getting the pinwheel constantly. My computer cannot complete a tast; I click to turn on wifi = pinwheel, try to open any application = pinwheel, move the cursor too fast = pinwheel. It also has randomly restarted. Is this something that I can have corrected or do I just need to look into purchasing a different laptop?
I have an older Apple MacBook (A1342) with High Sierra OS that I am getting the pinwheel constantly. My computer cannot complete a task; I click to turn on wifi = pinwheel, try to open any application = pinwheel, move the cursor too fast = pinwheel. It also has randomly restarted. Is this something that I can have corrected or do I just need to look into purchasing a different laptop?
ok I have know Idea on how to get on to google on my mac or ibook G4 it will not let me click on firefox. I also have to problom of this spining beachball of death and have know idea how to get rid of it. I do not know how to work anything on it. I only know how to huck up the WiFi. This is my first time geting anything apple pleace help me or im going to smash this thing.