Restart Finder on the Mac
It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes Finder becomes very slow or freezes completely. That’s damn inconvenient, because if Finder is inoperable, the simplest tasks suddenly become impossible, such as opening a window. Restarting Finder may solve your problem. In this tip we show you 5 different ways you can do that.
- #1 Reboot via dock
- #2 Force Quit Finder
- #3 Quit Finder with Alt+Cmd+Esc
- #4 Quit Finder via Activity Monitor
- #5 Quitting Finder with Terminal
- More tips for Finder
Method 1: Restart Finder from the dock
You can restart Finder using a hidden option in the macOS dock. Hold down the Option key and Ctrl-click (or right-click if you’ve set that option) the Finder icon in the dock. This will bring up the ‘Restart’ option. This is Finder’s reset button that will immediately get the program working again if it crashes.
Method 2: Force restart Finder via  menu
You can also force Quit Finder from the  menu if the program is still running. This is useful when Finder is stuck and you can’t get out of the program.
- Click on a Finder window to make the app active.
- Hold down the Shift key.
- Press the  icon in the top left corner of the menu bar.
- Choose the Force Quit Finder option.
You can force quit any program in macOS this way, as long as you have it running. Click the Finder icon to restart the program.
Method 3: Alt+Cmd+Esc
This is the shortcut for force closing programs. If you press Alt+Cmd+Esc, a new window appears that allows you to force all macOS programs to quit.
This list also includes the Finder of macOS. If you select it, the “Force Quit” button immediately changes to “Restart.” Click this button to force-quit Finder and then reopen it.
You can also find this option by clicking  > Force Quit from any other program.
Method 4: Quit Finder with Activity Monitor
The standard Activity Monitor utility lets you stop any process in macOS, including the Finder app.
- Open the Activity Monitor program.
- Click the “CPU” column.
- Here you will see a huge list of processes.
- Browse to Finder. This is easiest if you sort the names alphabetically.
- Click on the cross button at the top left to stop the program.
Here you will not only find the option to force quit Finder, but also normally. With a normal stop, you have to restart the program manually afterwards. This happens automatically with a forced stop.
In addition, during a normal stop, Finder tries to complete all its tasks in advance, which may be necessary to prevent corrupt files, for example. On a force quit, Finder doesn’t look at anything, drops everything and restarts the software.
Method 5: Quit Finder with Terminal
Finally, you can of course also force quit Finder via the Terminal program. Open the Terminal program from the Utilities folder and type in the following command:
killall Finder
Don’t make any typos or Terminal will refuse to do anything. Then immediately press Enter. This Terminal command forces a restart of the Finder application.
More tips for Finder
Below are more tips for Finder:
- Finder crashes on your Mac? This is how you solve it!
- This way you can make the Finder on the Mac more clear by zooming in
- Quick Actions: Perform quick actions in the Finder on Mac
- Unhide hidden Mac files in Finder
- This way you always place folders at the top of the Finder on the Mac
- Here’s how to adjust the column width of a Finder window
