I have a very embarrassing admission to make: after 33 years of being a Mac user, I was completely stumped when I recently tried to force quit and restart my 2017 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. Fortunately, I was able to figure it out so I thought I’d pass along this tip to readers of the Rocket Yard who might also run into this situation. [Update: October 2018:] This tip is also compatible with the new 2018 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and the 2018 MacBook Air.
How To Manually Shut Down Macbook Pro Not Responding
So a few weeks ago my 2012 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro started shutting down on its own. While on battery power (an nowhere near a charger) the device simply went to sleep. After repeatedly pressing the power button I saw the low-battery indicator, but after plugging in the device I still had more than 30% battery left.
Answer: On a Mac without an eject key (like the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro Retina Display), you can force your computer to shut down at any point by pushing Command + Control + Option + Power button. Before you resort to this, first try a force quit on a problem application by pushing Command + Option + Esc.
Select the app in the Force Quit window, then click Force Quit. You can also force the Finder to quit, if it stops responding. Select Finder in the Force Quit window, then click Relaunch. If none of your apps are responding, you can force your Mac to restart. You can also force an app to close on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
Force shutdown or reinstalling macOS can fix Macbook or iMac that won't shut down, however, some people reported that some of their files are gone after a force shutdown or OS reinstalling. Fortunately, they can recover the missing files with FonePaw Data Recovery.
This all happened while I was upgrading the MacBook Pro to macOS 10.13 High Sierra beta 8. During the installation process, my MacBook Pro restarted several times, and at one point I was asked to log in. I did so, and then followed the prompt to log into iCloud. So far, so good.
The next time I looked at the MacBook Pro screen, it was black except for a progress bar that didn’t seem to be making any progress. I waited about a half hour, and finally decided it was time to force quit the laptop, reboot, and see if that solved the problem.
Resetting the Mac's volatile RAM is a good measure and a necessary step. Let's plese do this for good measure Shut down the computer. Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4. Turn on the computer. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys.
On just about every recent Mac I’ve ever owned, there’s a simple method of doing a force restart — just hold down the power button until the machine reboots. On old Macs, the power button was useful for a similar method — shutting off the Mac, and then turning it back on. So I started searching for the power button on the MacBook Pro…
(The (nearly) invisible power button of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.)
Do you see it in the picture above? I didn’t. And believe it or not, in the months that I had owned the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, I had never needed to use a power button. The login screen was always there when I flipped the display up, and the MBP always went to sleep when I flipped the screen back down.
What I didn’t realize is that the Touch ID button at the far right end of the Touch Bar is actually a button — the power button. I had placed my finger on it plenty of times to log in, but never actually pushed it. All it takes to force a restart of a frozen MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is to press down on the Touch ID button until the device reboots.
How To Manual Shut Down Mac Book Pro 10
This is one case where I think Apple carried its simplistic design a little bit too far. Would it have been that much of a bother to just put a small power button graphic above the Touch ID button? The only clue that the Touch ID button is also a power button is at the very bottom of this Apple support page in a discussion on Touch Bar accessibility features:
How To Manually Shut Down Macbook Pro Using Keyboard
Sigh.
You can shut down your Mac if you won’t use it for an extended period of time or even perform a forced shutdown, which forces all running programs to shut down immediately. You have three ways to shut down your Mac:
Choose the Apple key→Shut Down. A dialog box appears, asking whether you’re sure you want to shut down. Click Cancel or Shut Down. (If you don’t click either option, your Mac will shut down automatically after a few minutes.)
Press Control+Eject (or press the power button). When a dialog box appears, click the Shut Down button.
Press and hold the power buttonto force your Mac to shut down. You can also force shutdown your Mac by pressing the Control+Option+Command+Eject keystroke combination.
Generally, a force shutdown is handy if your entire Mac suddenly freezes or hangs, making it unresponsive. Ingram mac 10 manual. If only a single program is freezing or acting flaky, you’re usually better off to force quit that single program instead of shutting down your entire computer. Avoid using a force shutdown if at all possible. Mac 10.6.8 to mac 10.11.6 manual.
Macbook Pro Will Not Shut Down
If you do nothing when you see the dialog box that asks, “Are you sure you want to shut down your computer now?”, the machine will turn itself off in two minutes. Seagate mac manual. If you want to shut down immediately, click the Shut Down button. If you’ve changed your mind, click Cancel.