Remove an item from the Dock: Drag the item out of the Dock until you see Remove. Only the alias is removed; the actual item remains on your Mac. If you accidentally remove an app icon from the Dock, it’s easy to put it back (the app is still on your Mac). Open the app to make its icon appear again in the Dock. Control-click the app’s icon. Take a minute to look at the row of icons at the bottom of your display. That row is the Dock, and those individual pictures are known as icons. Dock icons are a quick way to bring a hidden window or application to the front so that you can work with it again.
The rainbow-colored circle is a painful sight to see for Mac users. If you’re lucky it disappears in a few seconds, but more often it remains for minutes, leaving you helplessly locked out of the app or your whole Mac. Since it’s not always clear how to deal with with the wheeling cursor or what caused it in the first place, let’s break it all down. In this article we’ll take a look at what is the spinning beach ball, why and when it shows up, and what you can do about it.
What is a spinning color wheel?
Initially, it’s a system indicator. It’s official name is the Spinning Wait Cursor, not so official — the Spinning Beach Ball of Death or SBBOD. The ball signifies that your Mac cannot handle all the tasks given to it at this moment.
Every app on your Mac has a so-called window server. When an app receives more events than it can process, the window server automatically shows you the spinning ball. It usually takes about 4 seconds for the app to decide that it’s non-responsive.
Why does the Mac spinning wheel of death appear?
Well, the reasons are countless. First, it can be a stand-alone issue with a certain app. Second, it could be faulty hardware or insufficient RAM. We’ll go over each possible issue and see how it can be fixed, depending on the cause. Sometimes, the only way out it getting a new Mac, but most of the cases can be fixed with the right software or system commands.
How to stop the spinning ball on Mac?
In case you just need unlock one frozen application, that’s a job for Force Quit.
To fix an application stuck with a spinning cursor right now:
- Click the Apple icon in the top left corner.
- Choose Force Quit (or press cmd+alt+esc).
- Select the app that won’t respond.
- Click Force Quit.
Simply shutting down the process is a brutal way of problem solving and it doesn’t address the issue that caused the freezing. It could have been an accidental glitch in the program, but if it keeps freezing or spreads further to other software and services, you need to look deeper.
What if the application keeps freezing when you open it again?
Reset or reinstall the freezing application. Macs don’t have a proper uninstaller and moving applications to the Trash bin leaves plenty of app leftovers. Some of them could be the reason why the spinning wheel showed up, so if you leave them the issue will stay.
How to reset a Mac app to its default settings or uninstall it
There are two ways to reset apps: one would be to use application’s own preferences or settings and look for reset options there. But in case the app won’t let you do that (because it keeps freezing), you can turn to third-party solutions, like CleanMyMac X for instance. It’s a handy app for Mac maintenance and cleaning with plenty of useful tools, including reset and uninstallation.
- Download CleanMyMac X, an app for Mac maintenance.
- Open it and click on the Uninstaller.
- Select the app you need to reset from the list.
- Click on the small arrow next to the application icon
- Click Applications Reset.
If the beach ball keeps rolling when you use the app again, reinstall it completely by pressing Uninstall instead or Reset. Remember, simply moving the app to the Trash doesn’t do the trick, since its leftover files remain on your hard drive.
Important: if you have a licence for the paid app, makes sure to save the number somewhere.
What if your whole Mac becomes unresponsive?
Possible issue: Overworked processor
One of the reasons for the wheel to show up could be that your Mac is getting old. You can figure out if that’s the case by checking the CPU usage. To check the CPU usage, turn to Activity monitor. Find it in the Applications/Utilities folder or run a Spotlight search. Or, if you have CleanMyMac X, use it’s Menu in the top bar.
The bottom table shows System load in percentage. If it’s way above 50% and remains there for long, especially without any specific reason like games or heavy rendering programs, this might be the signal your processor is the bottleneck.
Fix: If your processor is overworking regularly, only buying a new Mac will fix the problem entirely. Sorry.
Possible issue: Low disk space
You don’t even need to have a full startup disk to see the nasty ball. Just a heavily loaded hard drive, with lots of large files can already cause troubles with loading.
Fix: Hard drive cleanup. Thankfully, that’s an easy task. You can get CleanMyMac X and in free up tons of space in a few minutes. With CleanMyMac you don’t need to dig into folders and look for files you don’t need, the app will find and sort them, plus all the system junk your Mac has been accumulating for months.
Possible issue: Insufficient RAM
Another possible hardware issue is insufficient Random Access Memory. To figure out if you need more RAM, open the Activity Monitor again. It’s in the Applications/Utilities folder. In the Memory tab, you can see Memory pressure table with a graph. If the graph is red and your memory is constantly strained under all the running apps, you’ve found the problem.
Fix: You can upgrade RAM by buying and installing more of it. It’s usually enough to have 8 GB for most tasks and applications, apart from heavy video rendering and the likes. Here’s a detailed guide on how to upgrade RAM on Mac.
That’s about it concerning the spinning beach ball and how to deal with it. We hope this guide has been of help and you’ll stop the spinning wheel of death on your Mac once and for all.
These might also interest you:
-->Note
Remove Apps From Yahoo
If you enabled the org-wide app setting, Allow interaction with custom apps, you may not see app setup policies yet in the Microsoft Teams admin center. It's currently being rolled out and will be available soon in your organization.
As an admin, you can use app setup policies to do the following:
- Customize Teams to highlight the apps that are most important for your users. You choose the apps to pin and set the order that they appear. Pinning apps lets you showcase apps that users in your organization need, including those built by third parties or by developers in your organization.
- Control whether users can pin apps to Teams.
- Install apps on behalf of users (in preview). You choose which apps are installed by default for users when they start Teams. Keep in mind that users can still install apps themselves if the app permission policy that's assigned to them allows it.
Apps are pinned to the app bar. This is the bar on the side of the Teams desktop client and at the bottom of the Teams mobile clients (iOS and Android).
| Teams desktop client | Teams mobile client |
|---|---|
To see their pre-installed apps, in the app bar, users click ... More apps in the Teams desktop and web clients and swipe up in the mobile clients.
Remove Apps From Yahoo Toolbar
You manage app setup policies in the Microsoft Teams admin center. You can use the global (Org-wide default) policy or create and assign custom policies. Users in your organization will automatically get the global policy unless you create and assign a custom policy. You must be a global admin or Teams service admin to manage these policies.
You can edit the settings in the global policy to include the apps that you want. If you want to customize Teams for different groups of users in your organization, create and assign one or more custom policies.
Note
If you have Teams for Education, it's important to know that the Assignments app is pinned by default in the global policy even though currently, you don't see it listed in the global policy. It will be the fourth app in the list of pinned apps on Teams clients.
Create a custom app setup policy
You can use the Microsoft Teams admin center to create a custom policy.
In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams apps > Setup policies.
Click Add.
Enter a name and description for the policy.
Turn on or turn off Upload custom apps, depending on whether you want to let users upload custom apps to Teams. You won't be able to change this setting if Allow third-party apps is turned off in org-wide app settings.
Turn on or turn off Allow user pinning, depending on whether you want to let users personalize their app bar by pinning apps to it.
To install apps for users (in preview), do the following:
Under Installed apps, click Add apps.
In the Add installed apps pane, search for the apps you want to automatically install for users when they start Teams. You can also filter apps by app permission policy. When you've chosen your list of apps, click Add.
To pin apps, do the following:
Under Pinned apps, click Add apps.
In the Add pinned apps pane, search for the apps you want to add, and then click Add. You can also filter apps by app permission policy. When you've chosen your list of apps to pin, click Add.
Arrange the apps in the order that you want them to appear in Teams, and then click Save.
Edit an app setup policy
You can use the Microsoft Teams admin center to edit a policy, including the global (Org-wide default) policy and custom policies that you create.
- In the left navigation of the Microsoft Teams admin center, go to Teams apps > Setup policies.
- Select the policy by clicking to the left of the policy name, and then click Edit.
- From here, make the changes that you want.
- Click Save.
Assign a custom app setup policy to users
You can assign a policy directly to users, either individually or at scale through a batch assignment (if supported for the policy type), or to a group that the users are members of (if supported for the policy type).
To learn about the different ways that you can assign policies to users, see Assign policies to your users in Teams.
FAQ
Working with app setup policies
What built-in app setup policies are included in the Microsoft Teams admin center?
- Global (Org-wide default): This default policy applies to all users in your organization unless you assign another policy. Edit the global policy to pin apps that are most important for your users.
- FirstLineWorker: This policy is for Firstline Workers. You can assign it to Firstline Workers in your organization. It's important to know that like custom policies that you create, you have to assign the policy to users for the settings to be active. For more information, go to the Assign a custom app setup policy to users section of this article.
Why can't I find an app in the Add pinned apps pane?
Not all apps can be pinned to Teams through an app setup policy. Some apps may not support this functionality. To find apps that can be pinned, search for the app in the Add pinned apps pane. Tabs that have a personal scope (static tabs) and bots can be pinned to the Teams desktop client and these apps are available in the Add pinned apps pane.
Keep in mind that the Teams app store lists all Teams apps whereas the Add pinned apps pane includes only apps that can be pinned to Teams through a policy.
I'm a Teams for Education admin. What do I need to know about app setup policies in Teams for Education?
The Calling app isn't available in Teams for Education. When you create a new custom app setup policy, the Calling app is displayed in the list of apps. However, the app isn't pinned to Teams clients and Teams for Education users won't see the Calls app in Teams.
How many pinned apps can be added to a policy?
A minimum of two apps must be pinned to the Teams mobile clients (iOS and Android). If a policy has less than two apps, the mobile clients won't reflect the policy settings and instead will continue to use the existing configuration.
There's no limit on the number of pinned apps you can add to a policy.
How long does it take for policy changes to take effect?
After you edit or assign a policy, it can take a few hours for changes to take effect.
User experience
How can users see all their pinned apps in Teams?
To view all apps that are pinned for a user, users may have to do the following depending on the number of installed apps and the size of their Teams client window.
| Teams desktop client | Teams mobile client |
|---|---|
| In the app bar on the side of Teams, click ... More apps. | In the app bar near the bottom of Teams, swipe up. |
What do I need to know about the Teams mobile experience?
The Teams mobile clients (iOS and Android) currently don't support personal apps with static tabs. Depending on the apps set in the policy, apps pinned to the Teams desktop client might not appear in the Teams mobile clients. Personal bots will still appear in Chat on mobile clients.
With the Teams mobile clients, users will see core Teams apps such as Activity, Chat, and Teams, and you can pin some first-party apps from Microsoft, such as Shifts.
Can users change the order of apps pinned through a policy?
Users can change the order of their pinned apps on Teams desktop and mobile clients if the Allow user pinning option is turned on. Users can't change the order of their pinned apps on Teams web clients.
Does user pinning take precedence?
If the app setup policy assigned to the user is changed to block user app pinning, Teams removes any apps pinned to the app bar. If the policy is then changed to allow user app pinning, users must re-pin their previously pinned apps.
Custom Teams apps
My organization built a custom Teams app and published it, either to AppSource or the tenant app catalog, but the app icon isn't displayed as expected when the app is pinned to the app bar in Teams. How do I fix it?
Make sure that you follow the logo guidelines before you submit the app. To learn more, see Checklist for Seller Dashboard submission.