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How to Fix a Slow Mac (The Spinning Beach Ball)

Applies tomacOS (MacBook, iMac, Mac mini)
5 min fix Updated 9 Aug 2026

By , 10+ years in IT support and helpdesk How these guides are checked

Quick Answer

Open Activity Monitor and sort the Memory tab from highest to lowest to find the app eating your Mac, then check System Settings > General > Storage — under 10 GB free is enough on its own to make a Mac crawl.

Checked against Microsoft Learn - Windows release health and Office release notes - Office for Mac between 5 Aug 2026 and 12 Sep 2026. Nothing published in that period has been linked to this guide.

Summary ​

Macs are famous for their speed, but if you keep seeing the "Spinning Beach Ball of Death" (the rainbow-colored cursor that spins endlessly when you click something), your Mac is struggling to process the commands you are giving it. This usually means you are out of RAM (Memory) or your Hard Drive is completely full. This guide walks you through finding the culprit and getting your speed back.

Before You Start ​

  • Save all your current work before beginning, as you will likely need to restart the computer.

Instructions ​

Step 1: Force Quit Frozen Apps ​

If a single app (like Microsoft Excel) is frozen, you do not need to restart the whole computer.

Press Command + Option + Escape, select the app marked (Not Responding) in the Force Quit Applications window, and click Force Quit. Anything unsaved in that app is discarded — that is the difference between Quit and Force Quit. Everything already saved, and every other open app, is untouched.

The other three routes — the Dock, the Apple menu, and Activity Monitor for an app that never appears in that list — are in How to Force Quit an App on a Mac. Come back here if the Mac is still slow once the app is closed, because then the problem is the machine rather than the app.

If the beach ball returns within seconds, or a second app starts spinning as soon as the first one closes, the machine is starved of memory rather than stuck on one program. Continue to Step 2.

Step 2: Use Activity Monitor to Find the Culprit ​

If the whole Mac is slow, you need to see exactly which program is hoarding the computer's resources.

  1. Press Command (⌘) + Spacebar to open Spotlight Search.
  2. Type Activity Monitor and press Return.
  3. Click on the Memory tab at the top.
  4. Click the column header that says Memory to sort the list from highest to lowest.
  5. If Google Chrome is using 8 GB of memory, that is your problem. You have too many tabs open. Close the app to free up resources.
  6. Click the CPU tab to see whether one app is holding 90-100% while you are not asking it to do anything. That tells you which app to close — stopping it from here is covered in How to Force Quit an App on a Mac, including the process names that belong to macOS and must be left alone.

If nothing at the top of the Memory tab is above about 2 GB and the CPU tab stays quiet while the Mac still crawls, no single app is the cause. Continue to Step 3.

Step 3: Check Your Storage Space ​

If your Mac's hard drive is 99% full, the computer literally does not have enough physical space to "think," which causes massive slowdowns.

  1. Click the Apple menu — the apple in the top-left corner of the screen.
  2. Select System Settings (or System Preferences).
  3. Click General, then click Storage.
  4. A colored bar will calculate how much space you have left.
  5. If you have less than 10 GB of free space, your Mac will be slow.
  6. Look at the recommendations below the bar, or manually delete large files from your Downloads folder and empty the Trash.

If the bar already showed well over 10 GB free and the beach ball keeps appearing, storage is not the bottleneck. Continue to Step 4.

Step 4: The Official Restart ​

Mac users are notorious for closing the laptop lid at the end of the day and never actually restarting the computer. A Mac needs to reboot at least once a week to install background security updates and clear out temporary system cache files.

  1. Click the Apple menu.
  2. Select Restart...
  3. Uncheck the box that says "Reopen windows when logging back in." (If you leave this checked, all the problematic apps will launch again immediately).
  4. Click Restart.

If the beach ball is back within minutes of a clean restart, the Mac needs a hardware check. Raise a ticket saying the beach ball returns straight after a restart, how much free space Storage reports, which app sits at the top of the Memory tab, and roughly how many times a day it happens.

Troubleshooting ​

Symptom / ErrorPotential CauseSolution
Mac is hot and fan is extremely loudHeavy processingYou are likely doing something intense (like a Zoom call while exporting a video). Close all other apps
Activity Monitor won't even openTotal system lockupHold down the physical power button (or Touch ID button) on the keyboard for 10 seconds to force a hard shutdown
Mac is still slow after a restart and clearing spaceHardware failureIf you have 50GB of free space, you restarted, and it's still crawling, the SSD may be failing. Ask IT to check the drive's health and arrange a repair — provide the serial number from Apple menu > About This Mac

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Frequently asked questions

Why does my Mac show the spinning beach ball?
The beach ball appears when your Mac is overwhelmed. It usually means an app has crashed, your memory (RAM) is full, or your hard drive is out of space.
Will Force Quitting an app delete my saved work?
It won't delete saved files, but any unsaved progress you made in the app before it froze will likely be lost.