I was trying to get into my personal Macbook a couple minutes ago but the screen was black and I had a spinning beach ball. I couldn’t remember if I had anything important open so I didn’t want to force a reboot. I hadn’t used the computer for a couple hours so I guessed that the screen saver had hung or VLC froze in full screen. I logged into my Macbook through ssh and ran ps -e. VLC wasn’t there, so I looked for screen-saver-y things and found 5827 ?? 0:00.22 /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine. I ended up killing it with sudo killall ScreenSaverEngine which immediately brought me back to my desktop. I am guessing I won’t have a screensaver back until I reboot. Hope this helps! Oh, and make sure that you already have SSH enabled (Remote Login in the Sharing preference pane) and know the IP/Domain of your laptop. I used johns-macbook.local which the OS set up for me automatically. My guess is that it is some sort of bonjour/zeroconf to dns bridge.
i also wrote the command
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaver ….and so one but at the end I put the character & so to start the screensaver everytime i logged into the terminal.
now i would like to remove this function but i am not able to do it. i’ve to write sudo killal screensaverengine everytime which is pretty annoying
do you or someone else know how to solve it? thanks
Have you restarted your computer?
In these cases it is the best you first try to restart… I know that’s a common joke on IT-people but in fact, it’s what works best in my opinion. But I’m guessing it has been solved by now?
3 seems to be the magic number for me for solving a problem with restarts. if not throw a temper tantrum and then it will restart!!!
thats how to stop tantrums!!!!
I am not really worried when it comes to Apple products, although there are times when you can experience hang times. A simple reboot would always solve the problem more often.
If not, then try to visit a shop you know about. If it persists, there could be some misconfiguration and that’s what you have to find out.
I have issues when I restart my mac over and over again. I can not restore my sessions anymore, has anyone else experienced this?
I used to have these kind of problems with my previous Mac as well… No I have a new one and it’s solved. Hope it will keep that way.
Although, do agree with the three-times-restart Debbie mentionned above!!
Thanks for sharing your solution, I just turned mine off when this happened but next time (if it happens) I’ll do it with the killall.
Thanks for sharing this solution, I often have this kind of problems. Next time I will certainly give it a go!
Spot on. Can say that I feel the same about what you come forward with. Personally, I do feel that it’s little over the top. Still I can’t help feeling that the topic is very relevant.
Very helpful, thanks! I just got a Mac and had no idea what to do when this happened!
Yes, rebooting solves most of the problems with mac. Actually I never had to use killal until now, but I’ll remember that for the future.