Safely remove any external drives by right-clicking on them and choosing “Eject ” or by clicking and dragging the volume to the Trash can. If you’re using an iMac, you can try unplugging everything except your mouse or Magic Trackpad (though keyboards shouldn’t cause an issue). For best results disconnect any attached peripherals and try again. Peripherals may also cause issues when trying to shut down your Mac.

Assuming you’ve gotten rid of any errant processes, it’s time to try shutting down again. Other apps that may have crashed will be highlighted in red, followed by a label that says “(Not responding).” You’ll need to click on these then click on the “X” to kill them too. If they are, click on them to highlight them, then click on the “X” at the top left to kill the process. You can order the “% CPU” column by descending order to see if any apps are using a high amount of CPU power. Open up Activity Monitor (hit Command + Spacebar then search for it) and click on the CPU tab. If this doesn’t work, it’s possible that a background process has crashed and is causing the issue. Right-click (or two-finger click) the app’s icon, hold the Options key on your keyboard, then click “Force Quit” and the app should close.

You can force quit any apps that aren’t responding or won’t close. First, try closing all of your applications by right-clicking (or two-finger clicking) on their icons in the dock, and choosing “Quit.” Occasionally your Mac will notify you that “Application blocked shut down” and sometimes you won’t see any errors at all. Sometimes software can prevent your Mac from shutting down properly. Assuming your Mac won’t shut down, it’s time to try a few more things.

Force close on mac book air