since catalina my mac is hanging indefinitely on shutdown. apps close and dock closes and the mac just hangs with the desktop screen showing. it will sit all night like that if I don't notice. doesn't do it every time, but persistently and frequently.
iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS 10.15
Turn off by holding down power button then
Do all three of these things
NVRAM reset
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
Safe Boot
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262#issue
them restart as normal
Turn off by holding down power button then
Do all three of these things
NVRAM reset
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
Safe Boot
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262#issue
them restart as normal
I've concluded it's some issue with Catalina not ejecting the external hard drive properly, whenever I manually eject it before shutting down, it works.
Note I've since upgraded to 10.15.3 and still happening but I don't think 10.15.3 had much over 10.15.2.
Assuming you did all three of the remedies you now need to create a spare Admin user account and test the drive there.
There is no inherent problem in Catalina, we need to find the problem on your Mac or your USB drive.
OK so you're saying I should create a fresh admin user account, and try doing shutdowns with that account to see if it hangs up?
Not sure what this will show or what to do after that... if it doesn't hang up, then what? if it does hang up, then what?
Standard diagnostic.
If it doesn't hang then there is a corruption in your user ~/Library.
If it continues to give problems then it is something else.
Then you can try other external disks.
Elimination and iteration.
thanks will try this and report back later in the week
Do you have an external monitor, or other Thundebolt device?
an external hard drive on USB which doesn’t eject when this happens
Try ejecting it first in the normal manner.
I right click on the desktop icon and click Eject [diskname]
If it refuses then you may be onto the cause.
ok thanks will try that if the resets above don't improve things
mac catalina 10.15.2 failing to shutdown
