Find the latest business news on Wall Street, jobs and the economy, the housing market, personal finance and money investments and much more on ABC News. Academy of Magic: Dark Possession for iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac & PC! Help Dennis and his friends fight against the forces of The Great Dark Wizard in this incredible match-3 quest!! When Yosemite was released, a more detailed boot screen came to your Mac. So now, just like on Apple's mobile devices, you will see a loading bar telling you how far into the startup process you are. Apple also decided to add a black version of this boot screen to newer Macs, leaving those of us who purchased a computer before 2011 out of the loop. This happens because Mac OS VMs have a non-generic property. This property is only for Mac OS VMs. After Restoring the VM, if this property is not found, then, the VM wouldn’t boot up.

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You have encountered a severe problem. That is your Mac stuck on the loading screen for a long time, usually after a recent macOS like macOS Big Sur update or macOS reinstallation.

You may regard such a long boot process as a slow startup of your Mac and wait for hours. But the sluggish progress bar still remains on the screen without any change.

In fact, your Mac won't turn on at all and froze on startup. All the documents, photos, videos, etc. on Mac are in danger of loss. Rescuing data from your Mac is a primary task before fixing the issue - Mac stuck on the loading screen with Apple logo on startup.

  • Restart your Mac
  • Boot your Mac in Safe Mode
  • Reset NVRAM/PRAM
  • Reset the SMC
  • Repair the startup disk
  • Reinstall macOS
  • Restore macOS with local APFS snapshot

Rescue data from MacBook/iMac stuck on loading screen

Save your important files now! Watch this video to rescue your data from Mac that can't boot past loading bar:

Tutorial to rescue your files with iBoysoft Data Recovery Software for Mac:

  • Start your Mac and press Option + Command + R key combinations until you see the spinning globe.
  • Make your Mac connected to the Internet all the time. You will see the spinning globe instead of the apple logo.
  • Open Terminal from Utilities drop-down menu.
  • Run the following command and it will launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac in macOS Recovery mode.

If the above command doesn't work, try solution 2 at: How to run iBoysoft Data Recovery in macOS recovery mode?

Then, you can use iBoysoft Mac Data Recovery to scan, preview, and recover data from your Mac within a few clicks. If you think the above steps are complicated, why not watch video above instead?

How to fix Mac stuck on loading screen?

Whatever, when your Mac like iMac or MacBook stuck on the loading screen, you can try the 7 available solutions below.

Or you are one of the users as below whose Mac crashes during boot. Even though your Mac stuck on login screen or your Mac won't boot past the Apple logo. These fixes are also applicable.

  • My iMac progress bar stuck at 100% after installing macOS Catalina. How to fix?
  • MacBook Pro stuck on loading screen with Apple logo. Any suggestions? (running macOS Big Sur).
  • MacBook won't load after a macOS update. Help!
  • My MacBook Air stuck on loading screen (fully loaded progress bar) for one hour! Any help is appreciated!

Solution 1: Restart your Mac

Whenever you encounter the boot problem, you can try rebooting Mac. This way is easy and sometimes works.

When your Mac, like MacBook Pro, is stuck on loading screen, you can press and hold the power button for a few seconds to turn off the Mac. Then, disconnect all peripheral devices from your Mac. This will isolate the problem caused by peripheral devices and leave the Mac alone.

After a few minutes, press the power button to restart the Mac again.

Solution 2: Boot your Mac in Safe Mode

Mac stuck on Apple logo with loading bar could be caused by software conflict or incompatibility. So, to confirm it, you can boot the Mac into Safe Mode.

A safe boot will prevent your Mac from launching unnecessary programs and login items at startup. It also does a basic check of your startup disk and may solve the slow startup issue of your Mac.

To boot your Intel-based Mac into Safe Mode:

  • 1. Force your Mac to shut down.
  • 2. Press and hold the Shift key while tapping the power button to start your computer.
  • 3. Release the Shift key until you see the Apple logo and loading screen.

To boot your Apple M1 Mac like M1 iMac into Safe Mode:

  • 1. Shut down your Mac and wait for seconds.
  • 2. Press and hold the power button until the startup disks and Options appear on the screen.
  • 3. Press and hold the Shift key, then click Continue in Safe Mode.

If your Mac boots past the loading bar and enter Safe Mode successfully, it's surely the software or firmware conflict. Find out the conflicting program or software, usually the recently installed third-party software, and then uninstall it.

Next, you can simply reboot your Mac and find that the Mac stuck on the loading bar issue is fixed.

Solution 3: Reset NVRAM/PRAM

PRAM or NVRAM is a non-volatile random access memory. It is used to store system settings on Mac, including startup disk selection and recent kernel panic information. So, when Mac won't boot after macOS update but Mac progress bar stuck at 100%, resetting NVRAM/PRAM might help.

To reset NVRAM/PRAM, you can simply restart your Mac and simultaneously press Command + Option+ P + R keys. If you have an M1 Mac, you don't need to reset NVRAM. Because it is automatically run test and reset on startup if needed.

Solution 4: Reset the SMC

SMC (System Management Controller) is used to control a number of Mac core functions, including sudden motion sensor and thermal management. Typically, when Mac freezes on startup or stuck on loading bar, SMC reset helps to resolve such unresponsive issues related to power and hardware.

To reset the SMC on a Mac computer stops loading halfway, follow the way below. Note that there is no SMC on M1 Mac.

1. Reset SMC when MacBook Air and MacBook Pro stuck on loading screen

  • 1. Force shut down the Mac that is frozen on loading screen.
  • 2. Press Shift + Control + Option on your keyboard and press the power button at the same time.
  • 3. Hold these keys for 10 seconds and then release the keys.
  • 4. Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.

2. Reset SMC when Mac Mini, Mac Pro and iMac stuck on loading screen

  • 1. Shut down your Mac and then unplug a power cord.
  • 3. Wait 15 seconds. Then, plug the power cord in.
  • 5. Wait several seconds and turn on your computer by pressing the power button.

Solution 5: Repair startup disk in macOS Recovery mode

Sometimes, the Mac stuck on the progress bar because the startup disk is corrupted. Fortunately, you can use First Aid, a built-in disk repair tool on your Mac, to fix the errors on the startup disk that cause the Mac stuck on the Apple logo with a loading bar.

Firstly, boot your Mac into macOS Recovery mode:

Mac Os Downloads

  • Press and hold the Command + R keys when rebooting your Mac.
  • Release the keys until you see a spinning globe or Apple logo on screen.
Mac

After booting into Mac Recovery mode, choose Disk Utility. Select the startup disk and click First Aid in the Disk Utility window. Next, click Run to check and repair the startup disk.

If First Aid successfully found the errors and repaired them, you can restart your Mac quickly without a slow startup. Disk Utility helps Mac boot up, and your Mac desktop or MacBook won't be frozen on the startup screen this time.

Solution 6: Reformat the startup disk and reinstall macOS

If you can't fix the Mac that stuck on the loading screen with First Aid, the startup disk is critically corrupted. In this case, you need to erase the startup disk in macOS Recovery mode. Disk erasure will reformat the hard drive with a new file system. And then, you can reinstall the macOS.

This usually will fix this issue. However, disk erasure will wipe all your files off the drive. So, if you have important files on this Mac, you should first rescue data from the Mac that stuck on the loading bar. It's necessary especially if you don't have any backup.

After data recovery, you can proceed with reformatting the Mac hard drive.

1. Reformat the corrupted startup drive

  • 1. Restart your Mac into macOS Recovery mode.
  • 2. Select Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities menu and click Continue.
  • 3. Select the Mac hard drive (often named Macintosh HD or Apple SSD) from the left sidebar.
  • 4. After clicking Erase on the top, you need to name it as Macintosh HD, and then give it a scheme and format.
  • 5. Click Erase to confirm this operation, and then wait it to complete.

Now, you have an empty but workable Mac hard drive.

2. Reinstall macOS in macOS Recovery mode

After erasing the Mac internal hard drive, you can continue to reinstall a new macOS in macOS Recovery mode. Click the Reinstall macOS utility in macOS Recovery mode and then follow the instructions to reinstall the operating system.

Hopefully, it fixes the Mac that stuck on the progress bar at startup.

Solution 7: Downgrade macOS

It's inevitable that a macOS update is not compatible with your Machine. For example, your Mac stuck on the Apple logo when you proceed or finish the macOS Big Sur update. The updated macOS Big Sur software is not compatible with MacBook Air before 2013.

To make the Mac boot past the progress bar and won't stick on the loading screen anymore, you can revert it to the previous state. In other words, just downgrade the macOS. Downgrading macOS may erase your hard drive, so you also need to back up data on the unbootable Mac first.

• How to downgrade from macOS Catalina to macOS Mojave

• How to downgrade from macOS Big Sur to macOS Catalina

Why is my Mac stuck on loading screen?

Curious about the reasons why your Mac not loading? Go on reading to get the answers.

Normally, Mac would show the Apple logo at startup once it finds your local startup disk. Then, based on if you have encrypted the startup disk, a loading bar appears after or before you log into the Mac.

The Mac progress bar indicates that the system is checking and loading macOS from the startup disk. It involves macOS structure, corn components, file system, etc.

However, if something is not going well, like the corruption of the startup disk file system, your Mac will stick on startup.

Conclusion:

It's terrible if your Mac stucks on the loading screen or shows a folder with question mark at startup.

Mac Os Dark Mode

For the Mac that freezes on startup, you should first check if you have a backup of your data to avoid permanent data loss. If not, iBoysoft Data Recovery software will be a good helper to recover lost data from the unbootable Mac. Then, you can try out the solutions above one by one till your Mac boots up rather than hangs on slow startup.

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