All of a sudden, you may find your Mac Finder not responding. The desktop may appear frozen, and it becomes challenging to handle files and folders on the Mac system. When this happens, the first thing that comes to mind is to force quit or restart Finder by opening Activity Monitor or Terminal and issuing a kill command for Finder process ID as given below.
However, before taking any drastic step, you should check the system log messages for the Finder application to get a better understanding of what’s causing this problem. Besides that, there are some other reasons why your Mac finder does not respond even after quitting it from the running processes list or Activity Monitor.
How to fix Mac Finder not responding?
Here are the top 5 reasons why Finder is not responding to problems that you can quickly fix without restarting your Mac system.
1. Low Disk Space on Mac
If you are running out of disk space on your Mac, Finder automatically stops working to prevent it from crashes caused by a lack of free memory. Therefore, check for low disk or delete some files from your Mac system to make more free memory available as a possible fix for Finder hangs.
2. Corrupted System Files on Your Mac
If the core system files or folders are not found, your finder process may have stopped working. The first thing you can do in this situation is force restart your Mac system once to see if that problem gets fixed on its own. Also, read our guide to fix Mac Can’t Connect to iCloud
3. Damaged Finder Preferences File
The finder preferences file refers to the file responsible for your screen size, desktop background, etc. If your finder hang is because of this preference file, you can create new finder preferences by taking these steps:
- First, you need to quit Finder from Activity Monitor.
- Next, press control + shift + G from your keyboard and then type /System/Library/CoreServices in the Go To The Folder text box.
- Release the keys and then click on the go button. Here, find a file named “com.apple.finder.plist” and rename it to “finder.old”.
- Next, create a new Finder Preferences file by copying the following code into the text box and then clicking the “go” button.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>LSUIElement</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>4. Virus, Malware or Spyware Infection
Though the Finder not responding issue can also be caused by a virus, malware, or spyware infection, the topmost reason behind this problem is low disk space. If you think some other third-party application or process is interfering with the Finder on your Mac system and making it corrupt, try killing that application from Activity Monitor and see if the Finder starts working again.
5. Screenshot Utility Application
Sometimes, when you take screenshots of the Mac desktop with Preview, Skitch or any other screen capture utility, it also stops Finder from running smoothly. If you are using one of these screenshot utilities and your Finder not responding problem started after that, try quitting these tools to see if this works for you.
Final Verdict:
I hope the above information helps you fix the “Finder not responding” issue on your Mac system. If you have any queries regarding fixing the Mac finder not responding issue, feel free to contact us by posting your comment in the box below. We will get back to you as soon as possible.