CTRL-ALT-DELETE on a Mac?

I have a question concerning my 2 year old MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015). MacOS Sierra. 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7. 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3. 1TB HD.

This concerns the ever-loving “Beach Ball”.

Every so often I’ll get a beach ball that just won't quit. I’m unable to access the "Force Quit …" menu because of the beach ball. The only option left for me is to hold down the power button to force a system restart, not something I like to do.

With Windows one can opt out of such a “loop” by using CTL-ALT-DEL. Is there anything like this on the MAC?

Or something else?

In advance, thanks!

CEO

Command-Escape-Option

Try different orders. There's another shortcut that uses two of those keys. I forget what it is. I disabled it a long time ago so I can do CEO in any order I want.

The procedure, toMACsh is giving you, is the keyboard shortcut to get to Force Quit.

Maybe you need to run Disk Utility > First Aid, from your Recovery partition?

And just to add to the miscellany of keyboard shortcuts:

As stated above Cmd + Option + Esc takes you to the Force Quit Menu from which you click the app you wish to Quit.

If you use Cmd + Option + Shift + Esc this automatically Force Quits the app currently open/active.

Ian

@fireman0174:

You might want to write down the various key combinations that are available to use such as the CEO and keep a small "cheat sheet" by your Mac. We have had many former Windows users ask the same thing. Sometimes I even forget certain key combos and have to look them up.

Thanks for the very useful information!

ferrarr said:

The procedure, toMACsh is giving you, is the keyboard shortcut to get to Force Quit.

Maybe you need to run Disk Utility > First Aid, from your Recovery partition?

Click to expand...

Ran with no apparent problems found.

How much free space on the bhard drive, firie, and do you use any cleaning utilities such as Mackeeper, CleanMyMac or antivirus software?

harryb2448 said:

How much free space on the bhard drive, firie, and do you use any cleaning utilities such as Mackeeper, CleanMyMac or antivirus software?

Click to expand...

I have the HD partitioned with Windows 8. Total space available for the Mac side is 893G. Available free space is 337G.

No Mackeeper or CleanMyMac.

Kaspersky Internet Security installed and is up to date. Have Kaspersky for 2+ years.

It's good that you don't have Clean My Mac or MacKeeper installed. Although some users swear by these programs others swear at them.

If you completely disable Kaspersky does the problem go away? One way to find out is to open Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities) and keep it open while you're working. When the beachballing starts look to see which app/processes are consuming CPU resources. Also check the memory tab and look at the memory pressure. It should be green under most circumstances. I don't think that's an issue but it is worth a look.

Slydude said:

It's good that you don't have Clean My Mac or MacKeeper installed. Although some users swear by these programs others swear at them.

If you completely disable Kaspersky does the problem go away? One way to find out is to open Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities) and keep it open while you're working. When the beachballing starts look to see which app/processes are consuming CPU resources. Also check the memory tab and look at the memory pressure. It should be green under most circumstances. I don't think that's an issue but it is worth a look.

Click to expand...

I've used Clean My Mac and MacKeeper on my other Mac(s) in the past but I was never pleased with either one and haven't used them in a couple of years.

Will try out your other suggestions when I have the time in a few days.

Thanks

Please be sure to post back and let us know the results.

Maybe you need to run Disk Utility > First Aid, from your Recovery partition?

Decluttering your desktop can also deflate the beach ball. You can test this by creating a folder on the desktop, call it something, select all the other icons on your desktop and copy them to the folder. Drag the folder into Documents in Finder and then restart.

Slydude said:

Please be sure to post back and let us know the results.

Click to expand...

I certainly will. Have been tied up with some family issues.

The tips for CMD-OPTION-ESC and CMD-OPTION-SHIFT-ESC work very nicely. Once in a while I have to press the keys more than once, but I suspect (hope) that it's because I'm not pressing them properly.

Thanks again for the assistance - it IS appreciated!!!

Once in a while I have to press the keys more than once,

Click to expand...

You can also keep Activity Monitor.app(Utilities folder) in your Dock and use it.

The stuck item will usually be in Red and labeled (not responding) which you can then click to select and then click the small X icon at the top left if the window.


PS: Activity Monitor.app is always a good thing to keep an eye on and see what your Mac might be up to, especially when things are acting up.




- Patrick
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pm-r said:

You can also keep Activity Monitor.app(Utilities folder) in your Dock and use it.

The stuck item will usually be in Red and labeled (not responding) which you can then click to select and then click the small X icon at the top left if the window.


PS: Activity Monitor.app is always a good thing to keep an eye on and see what your Mac might be up to, especially when things are acting up.




- Patrick
======

Click to expand...

More good info. Thanks.

P.S. You can also right click on the icon of the app you want to quit in the Dock and select "Force Quit".

I'm not really in favour of Kaspersky or any live background application that claims to do everything in the way of online security that sometimes means they don't do anything particularly well.
I prefer a VPN for two ended encryption for security. Malwarebytes for malware protection and Ghostery to prevent trackers.
You have mentioned that you used to have MacKeeper are you sure it has been completely removed? It is an invasive and insidious app which can be hard to remove.
Have you tried the free OnyX app for your macOS? There are different versions for each macOS. Running the Mantainece and Cleaning scripts can fix a lot of issues.