Mac Computer Stuck On Loading Screen: 10 Effective Solutions

An Apple logo and progress bar appear on the screen when the Mac takes a startup or installs macOS updates. Normally, a full startup takes about 30 seconds, and it is in macOS installation, the progress bar may last much longer than usual.

However, if you've waited long enough (for hours) yet the progress bar remains on the screen still, then possibly the Mac is stuck on the loading screen. This issue most often happens after a recent macOS update, like the macOS Sequoia update or macOS reinstallation. Relax, however, you can fix the Mac boot loop with approaches below.

The priority should be given to data recovery since if a MacBook is stuck on the Apple logo with a loading bar, all the precious files and data on it are inaccessible. So, download iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to rescue the files before getting your machine to boot as usual!

Why is your Mac computer stuck on the loading screen?

Normally, a Mac would show the Apple logo at startup once it finds the local startup disk. Then, you will see the progress bar with or without the Apple logo as the startup or macOS installation continues. But if the Mac is stuck on the Apple logo after restart or reinstallation, hanging a loading bar, the possible culprits may lie in:

Priority done before fixing the Mac stuck on the loading screen

When your MacBook won't turn on at all, and your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, iMac, Mac Pro, etc., freezes on the boot screen. All your documents, photos, videos, audio, numbers, words, documents, PDFs, presentations, and more are in danger of loss. 

Having backed up your Mac to an external storage is just like catching at a straw. Yet if you have chosen the internal hard drive as the backup destination, or you have no habit of backup, everything goes unexpectedly. Any professional approach may involve all your files. Hence, before the troubleshooting, getting all files at hand is a must!

Luckily, there is one last way you can rely on to fetch the data on your frozen machine -- that is, using iBoysoft Data Recovery Software to scan for files in macOS Recovery Mode.

Please watch this video to learn how to rescue data when the Mac is stuck on the loading screen with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

If you are not a fan of a video tutorial, please click the following post to recover data from an unbootable Mac that is stuck on the loading screen.

How to fix a Mac stuck on a loading screen?

Loads of users have complained about experiencing the issue on macOS Sequoia stuck on the loading screen online. This issue not only happens to macOS Sequoia, but to tell the truth, it also annoys users of macOS Sonoma, Ventura, Monterey, Big Sur, Catalina, and so on. It is a general trouble, instead of happening on a certain Mac model or Mac operating system.

This post gathers 10 helpful solutions to save the Mac from the boot failure, which are also suitable foe the scenarios like Mac stuck on login screen or your iMac won't boot past Apple logo. Let's see them in detail.

Note that the case may goes like that one way fails to get your machine back to the normal working state, just move to the next one directly please.

Solution 1: Disconnect the peripherals & Restart your Mac

As we concluded before, malfunctioned peripherals will trigger the Mac stuck on loading screen problems. So, you'd better disconnect all peripherals and restart it for a successful boot. 

If the Mac freezes on the loading screen still, try the next approaches directly.

Solution 2: Boot your Mac into Safe Mode

Software conflict or incompatibility with your machine can be blamed sometimes for resulting in the unboot. In this case, you can boot Mac into Safe Mode to isolate all involved reasons or components for a clean boot.

On top of that, this impressive feature also performs a basic check of the startup disk and troublrshoots some of the slow startup issues of your Mac.

To boot your Intel-based Mac into Safe Mode:

To boot your Apple Silicon devices into Safe Mode:

If your Mac boots the loading bar and enters Safe Mode successfully, you'll see "Safe Boot" on the right top of the screen. A successfully safe boot indicates it is the software conflict causing trouble. 

Pin the third-party software you've installed and uninstall it completely from your machine to prevent any boot failure in the future. If your MacBook Safe Mode is not working in fixing the stuck loading screen issue, go deep to the following solutions.

Solution 3: Reset NVRAM/PRAM

PRAM or NVRAM is a non-volatile random access memory to store system settings on a Mac, including startup disk selection and recent kernel panic information. So, when the MacBook is stuck on the Apple logo with a loading bar, resetting NVRAM/PRAM might make everything normal.

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 since it will automatically run a test and reset on startup if something goes wrong.

Solution 4: Reset the SMC

SMC (System Management Controller) is used to control several Mac core functions, including the sudden motion sensor and thermal management. Typically, when a MacBook is stuck on the Apple logo with a 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 steps below. Note that there is no SMC on the M1 Mac.

Reset SMC on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro

Reset SMC on Mac Mini, Mac Pro, and iMac

Solution 5: Reselect the startup disk

Sometimes, the Mac stuck on the loading bar results from your last booting from an external hard drive or another internal hard drive (if you have two). In this scenario, you need to reselect the startup disk.

By booting from another disk, the issue of the Mac stuck on the loading screen progress bar will disappear as expected.

Solution 6: Repair the startup disk

The boot disk that is corrupted may cause the Mac stuck on the progress bar. Fortunately, you can use First Aid, a built-in disk repair tool on your Mac, to fix the errors on the startup disk in macOS Recovery Mode.

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

Solution 7: Boot Mac into Single User Mode

Single User Mode is another boot mode on Mac used to troubleshoot Mac problems and perform administrative tasks. You will access a Unix prompt, where you need to use commands such as fsck to perform basic repairs to the startup drive. It may work to fix the Mac stuck on the Apple logo when loading.

Solution 8: Reinstall macOS

Perhaps, it is the error with the Mac operating system that causes the Mac stuck on the loading screen problem. The current macOS may be outdated or corrupted, then you can reinstall macOS in macOS Recovery mode.

Besides, you may encounter a Mac update stuck on the Apple logo, such as a Big Sur update stuck on the Apple logo on your device, you also need to reinstall Mac OS. However, if the Mac is stuck on the loading screen after updating macOS, then you can downgrade macOS to an earlier version.

Just boot in to macOS Recovery Mode > Utilites > Reinstall macOS > follow up with the onscreen wizard to complete the whole reinstalltion. Once the macOS is reinstalled, try to boot your machine normally to see if this way helps.

Solution 9: Restore Mac to a previous point

If you have backed up the Mac with Time Machine, you can use the backup drive to restore Mac from Time Machine to an earlier date when the stuck loading screen problem doesn't exist. Here's how:

If the startup disk can't be fixed by First Aid and is still unmounted in Disk Utility, it may be critically corrupted. In this case, you need to erase the disk and then reinstall Mac OS in macOS Recovery mode to fix the Mac stuck loading screen problem.

However, disk erasure will wipe all your files off the drive. So, if you have important files on this Mac, scroll up to the Priority section to rescue all of your files first.

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

Go back to the macOS Utilities window and click Reinstall macOS. And then, follow the instructions to reinstall the Mac operating system.

Conclusion

It's terrible if your Mac is stuck on the loading screen at startup. For the Mac computer 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 for Mac will be a good helper to recover lost data when the Mac is stuck on the loading screen. Then, you can try out the solutions above one by one till your Mac boots up rather than hangs on slow startup.