news | April 18, 2026

Why does my MacBook Air keep freezing and restarting?

If your Mac keeps freezing, it could be that the SMC needs to be reset. For both MacBooks and desktop Macs, turn off the device, then press and hold the power button for 10 seconds. Let go and wait a few seconds, then press it again to turn on the Mac.

Correspondingly, why does my MacBook Air keep freezing and shutting down?

If your Mac is freezing, it could be that there's an error with either the PRAM or NVRAM. First, shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately press Opt+Cmd+P+R. Hold these keys for 20 seconds; your Mac may restart during this time, but keep holding them for the 20-second duration.

Also, why does my MacBook Air keep restarting? There can be many reasons why your MacBook keeps rebooting. The most common issue is conflicting applications. Another issue could be incompatible hardware or peripheral devices. It could be an issue of not enough RAM or hard drive space.

Regarding this, why does my MacBook Air keeps freezing?

Macs are fairly powerful, durable devices. It takes a lot to slow them down, or a simple issue of the Mac running too many programs, apps and browser tabs (all of then use processing power). Apps crashing are some of the most common reasons behind a Mac freezing.

How do I stop my MacBook Air from restarting?

Press cmd+alt+esc and Force Quit any applications that are Not Responding. Put your computer to sleep from the Apple menu. Restart your computer from the Apple Menu.

Related Question Answers

What do you do when your Mac is stuck on the loading screen?

If your Mac is stuck on this screen
  1. Press and hold the power button on your Mac for up to 10 seconds, until your Mac turns off.
  2. If the issue persists, press and hold the power button until your Mac turns off.
  3. If the issue persists, once again press and hold the power button until your Mac turns off.

What do I do when my macbook air freezes?

If the OS is frozen but the mouse cursor still responds, click the Apple (?) symbol in the upper left corner of the screen and select Restart. Otherwise, try holding down the Control (Ctrl) key and pressing the power button. If the system shutdown dialog appears, select Restart from the available options.

How do I unfreeze my Mac mouse?

If it doesn't work, hold the Power button of your computer until it turns off, and turn it on. Try the key combination Command+Option+Esc to bring up the Force Quit window. Use the up or down arrow keys to select Finder and then the Enter key to relaunch the Finder. See if that will unfreeze the mouse.

Why does zoom keep crashing on my Mac?

Zoom video calls require significant bandwidth. It is known that Zoom may crash because of connection-related issues. Issues like low bandwidth, busy Wi-Fi, unreliable connection or throttling can cause this issue. Check for issues that might be slowing down your Internet connection.

Why is my Mac freezing and running slow?

Mac is Running Slow due to Lack of Hard Drive Space. Running out of space may not just ruin your system performance—it can also cause the applications you're working with to crash. That happens because macOS is constantly swapping memory to disk, especially for setups with low initial RAM.

How do you reset the PRAM on a Mac?

Shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately press and hold these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. You can release the keys after about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to restart. On Mac computers that play a startup sound, you can release the keys after the second startup sound.

How do I turn off my Macbook Air 2020?

On your Mac, choose Apple menu > Shut Down. If you don't want app windows that are open to reopen when your Mac restarts, deselect “Reopen windows when logging back in.” A Mac is completely shut down when the screen is black.

Why are Macs so cold?

When you touch the metal of the Macbook Pro, heat transfers from your body to the Macbook Pro much more quickly than it would to something like plastic. You perceive the Macbook Pro to be "cold." In actuality, you are perceiving the rate of heat transfer, rather than the temperature of the Macbook Pro.

How do you refresh a Macbook Air?

How to reset a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro
  1. Hold down the Command and R keys on the keyboard and turn on the Mac.
  2. Select your language and continue.
  3. Choose Disk Utility and click continue.
  4. Choose your startup disk (named Macintosh HD by default) from the sidebar and click the Erase button.

Why is my Mac not responding?

If you cannot interact with the Apple menu (perhaps your mouse is unresponsive), press Command-Control-Eject on your keyboard. This instructs macOS to restart immediately. If that doesn't work (if your keyboard is also unresponsive), press and hold the Power button on your Mac until your Mac switches off.

How do I reset the SMC on my macbook air?

How to reset the SMC on Mac notebooks:
  1. Choose Apple menu > Shut Down and wait for your Mac to shut down.
  2. Press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the built-in keyboard, then press the power button at the same time.
  3. Release all keys.
  4. Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.

Why do my laptop keep restarting?

Why does my computer keep restarting? There could be multiple reasons for the computer to keep restarting. It could be because of some hardware failure, malware attack, corrupted driver, faulty Windows update, dust in the CPU, and many such reasons.

How do I fix my Mac from restarting?

How to Fix a Mac that Keeps Rebooting
  1. 1 Force Restart the Mac. If your Mac computer is showing a Kernel Panic screen, is frozen or not responding, you may need to forcefully restart it.
  2. 2 Check for Updates. Select the Apple menu, then App Store.
  3. 3 Check Startup Programs. Select the Apple Menu and then System Preferences.
  4. 4 Reinstall macOS.

How do I stop my Mac from restarting?

On the Mac. to see if the delayed shutdown command is actually running on that Mac. If it is, the killall should stop it and prevent the restart. Just run the ps axc command again afterwards to confirm it no longer shows up in the process list.

Why does my IMAC keep restarting?

Therefore, if your Mac is constantly rebooting after displaying the Apple logo, then there might be a problem with the kernel extensions that is preventing the system from booting properly. First try booting to Safe Mode by holding down a Shift key when the system restarts.

What happens if your MacBook Air won't turn on?

On a modern MacBook without a removable battery, press the Power button and hold it down for ten seconds. If your Mac is running, this will forcibly cut the power to it and force it to restart. On a Mac with a removable battery, shut it down, unplug it, remove the battery, wait ten seconds, and then reinsert it.

Why does my Mac keep going black?

Sometimes a black display is the result of corrupt information on the startup disk. You can force your Mac to run diagnostics on the disk by booting into safe mode. To start up in safe mode, power up or restart your Mac and hold the Shift key until the Apple logo appears on the screen.

How do you hard reset a MacBook?

How to Factory Reset: MacBook
  1. Restart your computer: hold the power button > select Restart when it appears.
  2. While the computer restarts, hold down the 'Command' and 'R' keys.
  3. Once you see the Apple logo appear, release the 'Command and R keys'
  4. When you see a Recovery Mode menu, select Disk Utility.

How do you fix a MacBook Pro that keeps turning off?

How to stop your MacBook Pro from randomly shutting down
  1. Connect your Mac to its power adapter.
  2. Quit all open applications.
  3. Close your computer's lid, which puts your Mac in to sleep mode.
  4. Let your Mac charge for at least 8 hours.
  5. After eight hours, update to the latest version of macOS.

How do I free up storage on my Mac?

How to free up storage space manually
  1. Music, movies, and other media can use a lot of storage space.
  2. Delete other files that you no longer need by moving them to the Trash, then emptying the Trash.
  3. Move files to an external storage device.
  4. Compress files.

How long does a Mac laptop last?

five to eight years