To resolve this problem, you have to force quit all the active apps on your Mac. Well, there are many other reasons you are getting a Mac spinning wheel instead of a cursor, and here are they. But it could also be that the app is waiting for some other reason, perhaps for data from the network. The most common cause for this is a lot of Virtual Memory swapping (High Memory Pressure in Activity Monitor).
![what are the reasons to cause mac spinning wheel of death what are the reasons to cause mac spinning wheel of death](https://i3.cpcache.com/merchandise/7_300x300_Front_Color-AshGray.jpg)
Oftentimes, the active apps on your Mac trigger the spinning beach ball to appear and the intermittent WiFi connection problem to arise. For instance, if you are developing an iOS app on a 2015 MacBook Air using Xcode, opened a few Chrome tabs and a couple of Terminal windows, there you could get a spinning wheel on Mac (or Spinning Pinwheel of Death). The spinning wheel of death appears if the current app hasn't responded to user input for 2+ seconds. Checking your Mac's available storage space and RAM capacity can shed light on the potential causes of a frequent spinning wheel.
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I ended the AppStore app and the opened it and all the pending apps I had purchased downloaded instantly! Late reply but hope it helps!!!-no I didn't check to see of there was an answer already! The spinning wheel usually appears when an application freezes, or overloads your Mac's processing power. Turn off your auto updates under SETTINGS - iTunes & App Store.
What are the reasons to cause mac spinning wheel of death update#
Someone please help? It looks like the auto update for apps is causing this. I have about 2 1/2 pages of work which isn't saved and I was using spell check for a word and then suddenly and I clicked 'Changed' the spinning wheel of death came on! I tried looking on google for help and all I could find was people telling me to Force Quit, which I do not want to do because none of it is saved and it took me a good 1 1/2 to write it all.