If the Finder itself isn't responding, you can force a Force Quit on it, too. What Is the Spinning Wheel of Death on a Mac That rainbow spinning wheel (whatever you might call it) is a common macOS wait cursor. Keep reading to learn what makes a computer faster.
However, instead of focusing on the negative, let’s also consider how to make your computer faster. For example, applying a Gaussian blur to an image in Adobe® Photoshop® is a processor-intensive activity. The spinning wheel of death, or rainbow cursor, means that you have a slow computer on your hands now. Find the app that's not responding (it'll say "Not Responding" to the right of the name), click on it and hit Force Quit. 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. The interface, or the part the user actually sees, is a customized collection of commands and features. You should see the Force Quit Applications screen pop up with every app you're using listed within the menu. All Apple computers made in the last ten years use the OSX operating system. If you look at the app in the toolbar at the bottom of your screen, it should no longer have a dot underneath it, signifying you've successfully exited. Find the unresponsive app from the Command column, copy the PID (located in the leftmost column) by highlighting and typing "Cmd + C." Open a new window in Terminal, type "Kill," hit the spacebar, and type "Cmd + C." A message along the lines of "Kill 93142" should pop up. Terminal displays your CPU and RAM usage diagnostics. Go to your Applications folder, scroll down to Utilities, and launch Terminal. You can find the Apple icon in the upper-left corner of your screen. Press "Option, Command, and Esc (Escape)" at the same time or choose Force Quit from the Apple menu. Your Mac will verify that you really want to quit the process before exiting it. To find the Activity Monitor, click on the Spotlight icon (it's the magnifying glass icon on the top right of your screen) and type "Activity Monitor." You'll then be taken to a task manager window where you isolate the unresponsive app and click the Stop Sign button to quit. If the last few steps haven't solved your problem, you can open the Activity Monitor. Look through the list of options and select Force Quit. Press and hold the Option key and you'll see the Quit selection. Right-click (Ctrl-Click) on the app in your toolbar. Let's say Spotify is giving you a hard time. Is your Mac stuck with a spinning ball of death If you cannot quit an app, or if macOS is completely unresponsive, here’s a quick tip on how to get rid of the spinning ball on your Mac.
After you access the OS X Recovery utility, you may need to select a Wi-Fi network so that your Mac can download the latest installation files. Restart and hold down the 'Command-R' keys.
Choose Quit from the app's menu or hit Command (⌘)-Q. Reinstalling Mac OS X fixes any corrupt system files and repairs the operating system without deleting your files, applications and other data. Before you escalate things and attempt to force quit, try to close the lagging Mac app normally.