Mac Color Wheel, What is it?
You are using your Mac, but it feels somewhat sluggish. It seems to be underperforming without any obvious reason. Suddenly, you see a rainbow-colored wheel that spins instead of your mouse cursor. Believe it or not, this weird change is part of macOS. It signals that there are major performance issues with your Mac. Typically, if you see the Mac color wheel, it will disappear in a few seconds, and everything will be back to normal. However, if it keeps showing up regularly, then you need to identify the cause of the problem and resolve it. Trying our tips on How to Fix a Slow Mac is a good way to troubleshoot the problem.
The weird Mac Color Wheel actually has an official name – Spinning Wait Cursor. But tech-savvy Apple users also refer to it as the Spinning Beach Ball of Death. So, how do you stop this issue from occurring?
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Use the Force Quit Menu
Since the Mac color wheel signals that you are short on hardware resources, the first thing to do is to eliminate unnecessary apps. Go to Apple Menu -> Force Quit to see a list of active applications. Select Force Quit for the ones that you do need right now or for any apps you suspect might be frozen.
Restart Your Mac to Fix the Mac Color Wheel
The best way to deal with performance issues, regardless if you are using Windows or Mac, is to restart your computer. This will allow all software to start fresh, it will dump the system cache, and may eliminate a wide range of issues that may have occurred if you had your computer running for days or weeks at a time.
Other Possible Causes and Fixes
If stopping unnecessary apps did not help solve the issue, then you might want to try clearing some extra RAM on your Mac by using our guide on How to Clear RAM on Mac. In addition to this, lack of hard disk space might also be the cause of the problem. You can find information on how to free up some space on your Mac thanks to our posts on How to Clean the 'Other Storage on Mac' and How to Clean Log Files on Mac.
