There aren’t that many things that can make a Mac user feel irritated than when their device’s pointer suddenly freezes and they see the spinning color wheel. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s essentially a system indicator that outlines whenever your Mac’s system is struggling to handle a certain task or app that you have active at that point in time.
In some cases, the cursor only spins for a few seconds and everything normalizes once the processing cycles are now free, but in other cases, the application can become very unresponsive and essentially freeze. In these cases, the only thing you can do is simply force quit the app.
Investigating The Problem
Even if you are able to fix the signing cursor, that is just the first part of the problem, because you will need to find out why this has happened to prevent a repeat occurrence. However, the good news is that there are numerous things you can do to help prevent the problem from happening too often. The first thing is to pinpoint which Mac apps are consuming the most processing power. You can download third-party apps to help you figure this out. For instance, iStatMenus, is a powerful monitoring tool that can help you better keep track of your Mac’s performance levels. It will also help you analyze how well or badly your device is performing.
In this respect, you can also simply it’s the native application that comes in every Mac device, which is the Activity Monitor. Simply type that in your search bar or open the application on your launchpad. However, you can also use both applications which should give you an even better reading of how your MacBook is running and what apps are overloading its CPU. You can then uninstall the apps that are causing the most trouble and also do make sure that you erase any temporary files or caches that may be left behind. You can use a third-party app like CleanMyMac, for that.
The app essentially comes with an uninstaller feature that will help you to remove the applications you no longer need with ease. The benefit of doing this is that you’ll end up freeing up significant disk space which is important because your startup disk needs sufficient space to host RAM to read and write files to it. In other words, if your hard drive is full, your Mac will start to freeze more often and your apps will start to crash as well.
If you are struggling to free up disk space, you can always back up your important files and move them to an external hard drive using a usb c hub with a long cable and then delete the originals. You can utilize applications like getting Backup Pro to help you back up. Moreover, an application like Disk Drill can help you locate the files that may be hidden in your system storage that may be consuming the most space. In most cases, you would be surprised how much space cache files can end up taking on your hard drive.
Get More RAM For Your Mac
In the event that none of these solutions still don’t work, then the next best thing is to increase the amount of memory that your MacBook has. Since the issue is normally a result of having a limited RAM, then buying some more is the next best thing. The more storage you have, the less your Mac will need to depend on virtual memory. The only problem with that is that these days, it’s very difficult to install more Ram into your Mac. In most cases, you are advised to buy a Mac with a good amount of RAM at the beginning, to avoid such problems down the road. However, since you are already stuck with the Mac you have now then you will have to go to the nearest Apple store and ask them to install one on your behalf. It’s never a waste of money to invest in more RAM early, as your device will perform much better for a much longer period of time. However, replacing your RAM is normally done as a complete last resort, since in most scenarios, following any of the prescribed steps above, should fix the issue completely.
Conclusion
This article should be of help in guiding you to fix the cursor issue, as well as help you discover whether or not the problem is due to having insufficient storage or memory or if it is a problem with your applications. As previously mentioned it’s best to always leave enough space on your hard drive as this is the main cause of a spinning cursor/freezing Mac and you can always store the files in an external drive or SD card, in which case purchasing a quality hdmi sd card reader will prove to be useful.
