How to restart a Mac, including when it's frozen

To restart a Mac, choose Apple menu > Restart. The keyboard shortcuts, how to force restart a frozen Mac, safe mode, and what to do when it won't restart.

28 October 20266 min read

To restart a Mac, click the Apple menu in the top left corner of the screen, choose Restart, then click Restart again in the box that appears. If the Mac is frozen and nothing responds, press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds until the screen goes black, wait a moment, then press it again to start up.

Those two cover nearly every case. Below are the keyboard shortcuts, safe mode on Apple silicon and Intel Macs, and what to do when a restart won't go through.

This is the normal way, and the gentlest one, because every app gets the chance to close properly and ask you about unsaved work.

Save anything you are working on. Most Mac apps save as you go, but not all of them, and a half-written web form may not survive.
Click the Apple menu and choose Restart.
A box asks whether you want to restart now, with a checkbox labeled Reopen windows when logging back in.
Click Restart. If you walk away instead, the Mac waits about a minute and then restarts by itself.

macOS then quits your apps. An app with unsaved changes may stop to ask you what to do, and the restart waits for your answer. When the Mac comes back, you log in as usual.

Reopen windows, or start clean

The checkbox decides what you come back to. Leave it ticked and your apps and windows reopen where they were, which is what you want after an update or a routine weekly restart. Untick it when an app has been misbehaving, so it starts fresh instead of reopening into the same trouble. macOS remembers your choice for next time.

Keyboard shortcuts to restart a Mac

Apple's list of Mac keyboard shortcuts includes a few that use the power button. On a MacBook with Touch ID, the power button is the Touch ID key at the top right of the keyboard. On a desktop Mac it is on the back or underneath, depending on the model.

Shortcut	What it does
`Control` and the power button	Opens a box asking whether you want to restart, sleep or shut down, on Macs that support it
`Control Command` and the power button	Restarts at once. Apple describes it as forcing a restart without asking you to save open documents
`Control Option Command` and the power button	Quits all apps, asking about unsaved work, then shuts down

Treat the middle one with care. It is quick, but anything you haven't saved is gone, so it belongs to the moments when an app is stuck and you don't mind losing what it had open.

One shortcut people often mix up: Control Command Q locks the screen. It does not restart, log out or close anything.

How do you force restart a frozen Mac?

First, check whether it is the whole Mac or one app. If the pointer still moves and the Dock still responds, it is probably one app. Press Option Command Esc to open Force Quit, pick the app that says "Not Responding", and click Force Quit. That is usually enough, and you keep everything else.

If nothing responds at all, the pointer won't move or the screen is stuck on one image, force it:

Press and hold the power button. Keep holding for about 10 seconds, until the screen goes black and the Mac turns off.
Let go and wait a few seconds.
Press the power button once to start up again. On a MacBook, opening the lid or connecting power may also start it.

Anything you hadn't saved is lost, so keep this for real freezes. Some apps recover unsaved documents when you open them again, but don't count on it.

If the Mac freezes again soon after, something that loads at startup may be the cause. Safe mode, below, is the next step.

How to restart in safe mode

Safe mode starts the Mac with only what macOS needs. Apple says it checks your startup disk, stops login items from opening automatically, and clears some system caches. If a problem disappears in safe mode, the cause is probably an app or extension that loads at startup, not macOS itself.

The steps depend on the kind of Mac. To check, choose Apple menu > About This Mac. A line that says Chip means Apple silicon. A line that says Processor means Intel.

On a Mac with Apple silicon

Shut down the Mac and wait until it is fully off.
Press the power button and keep it held down until you see Loading startup options.
Select your startup disk, usually called Macintosh HD.
Press and hold the Shift key, then click Continue in Safe Mode.
Log in. You may be asked to log in twice.

On an Intel-based Mac

Turn on or restart the Mac, and right away press and hold the Shift key.
Let go when you see the login window.
Log in. You may be asked to log in twice.

On either kind, Safe Boot appears in the menu bar of the login window. To be sure, open System Information (hold Option and choose Apple menu > System Information), click Software, and look at Boot Mode. It reads Safe in safe mode and Normal otherwise.

Some things don't work in safe mode, and the Mac can feel slower while you are in it. To leave, restart the normal way, from the Apple menu.

Other ways to restart

From the login window. If nobody is logged in, the login screen offers Restart, alongside Sleep and Shut Down.
From Terminal. sudo shutdown -r now asks for your password and restarts immediately. It doesn't stop to let apps ask about unsaved work, so save first. It is mostly useful when you are connected to a Mac remotely.
For an update. When a macOS update is ready, System Settings > General > Software Update offers to restart and install it. The Mac may restart more than once and take longer than usual. Leave it alone until you see the login screen.

Why won't my Mac restart?

Usually, an app is holding things up. Look for one of these:

A save dialog. An app is waiting for you to decide about unsaved work, sometimes in a window hidden behind others. Check the Dock for an app icon that is bouncing.
An app that refuses to quit. macOS stops the restart and tells you which app interrupted it. Quit that app, or force quit it, and try again.
An update in progress. A progress bar or a dark screen with the Apple logo can sit there for a while during an update. Give it time before you force anything.
A frozen Mac. If nothing moves for several minutes, use the force restart steps above.

If restarts often hang on the same app, update that app, or see whether it is set to open at login in System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions (plain Login Items in older versions of macOS).

How often should you restart your Mac?

For most people, about once a week, plus whenever something feels off. Sleep is the normal state for a Mac between sessions, so you don't need to restart every day. A weekly restart clears out stuck background processes and apps that have slowly grown, and it lets waiting updates finish. How often should you restart your Mac covers the signs it is time.

The trouble is that closing the lid doesn't count, so a MacBook that sleeps every night can quietly run for a month. You can check how long your Mac has been on with one Terminal command, or let someone else keep count. In Notchpals, whose characters live in your Mac's notch, that job belongs to the Tech care crew. If Otto, the octopus with too many arms full, is the one you picked, he appears during working hours once the Mac has been up for more than a week, and never more than once a week.

Otto, Tech care: **Restart**, after a week without a restart

Notchpals never restarts anything for you. It only notices the Mac's uptime, and you choose the moment: Done once you have restarted, Later if now is a bad time, and he tries once more before letting it go. Restart every week on your own and Otto has no reason to visit, because the count starts over each time the Mac starts up.