Software · guide
By Alberto Gulotta · Updated · 12 min read
The answer to how to restart MacBook is one menu item: Apple menu → Restart. The power button is not involved, and the reason that is worth saying out loud is that the power button does two other things, both of which people reach for by mistake.
Held while it is running
this is a shutdown, not a restart“You can force a shutdown if necessary — for example, if your Mac becomes unresponsive — by pressing and holding the power button until your Mac shuts down. You may lose unsaved changes in open documents.” Elsewhere Apple puts a number on the hold: up to 10 seconds.
Held while it is off
this opens a menuHold it and “your Mac turns on and loads startup options”. Release when you see “Loading startup options” or the Options icon. That screen is where macOS Recovery lives — Disk Utility, Reinstall macOS, Restore from Time Machine.
Put together, those two cards say something the phrase “force restart” hides. Apple does not document a force restart on a Mac. It documents a force shutdown — hold until it goes off — and then, separately, a startup. The two-step is not clumsiness on Apple’s part; the second hold is a different instruction that lands you somewhere else entirely.
“If you don’t want app windows that are open to reopen when your Mac restarts, deselect ‘Reopen windows when logging back in.’”
It is a single checkbox in the confirmation dialog and it decides what the machine looks like on the other side. Leave it ticked and the restart is nearly invisible — everything comes back where it was. Untick it and you get a clean desktop, which is the point if the reason for restarting was that something had gone wrong with what was open. Apple attaches the same sentence to both Restart and Shut Down, so the choice is the same one either way.
That checkbox is the only decision the ordinary restart asks you to make, and it is easy to click straight past. It is worth a second of attention precisely when you are restarting because something misbehaved: reopening every window is exactly how you restore the state you were trying to clear.
“If you’re using a Mac laptop, wait for it to shut down completely before closing the display. If you close the display while the Mac is shutting down, it may not shut down properly and may start up more slowly the next time you turn it on.”
Apple marks that one Important, and it is the most quietly expensive habit on this page. Choosing Shut Down and immediately folding the laptop closed is the natural thing to do — and it is the documented cause of a slower start next time. How to tell it has finished: “A Mac is completely shut down when the screen is black.” Apple adds that some models also show no power light and make no fan or drive noise.
The other things worth knowing about that button
Small published details that change what you do with it.
The restart nothing is asking you for
Everything above is about restarting when something is wrong. There is a reason to do it when nothing is, and it comes from the UK cyber security centre rather than from Apple: an update can be downloaded and still not be in force. In its list of ways automatic updating quietly fails: “Some updates might require the device to be manually restarted. If a device hasn’t been restarted in a while then the update might not be installed.”
The same page explains why waiting is not free, and it is the part that changes how the delay feels. Once a patch is published, “attackers can work out what the original flaws were that have been patched in the update and start attacking devices that haven’t had the updates installed”. The fix and the description of the hole arrive together. Its instruction on timing is plain: “Install updates promptly when notified — ideally within a few days.”
And the case where restarting cannot help at all, from the US agency: “Do not use unsupported EOL software” — end-of-life, meaning a product the maker has stopped issuing updates for. Its position on those is one sentence: “CISA recommends that users and administrators retire all EOL products.” A Mac too old to be offered updates is not a Mac that needs restarting more often.
The Touch ID detail deserves its own moment, because on a modern MacBook there is no button that looks like a power button. The fingerprint sensor in the corner of the keyboard is it — a fact that is obvious once stated and genuinely puzzling until then, particularly if you are trying to hold something down on a machine that has stopped responding.
What lies behind the second hold is worth knowing even if you never need it today. The startup options screen leads to macOS Recovery, and Apple lists what is in there: Restore from Time Machine, Reinstall macOS, and Disk Utility for repairing or erasing the startup disk. Terminal and other utilities sit in the menu bar at the top of that screen.
One thing you do not have to shut down for. Apple says it plainly: “You don’t need to shut down your Mac when connecting or disconnecting cables, such as USB-C, Thunderbolt, or Ethernet.” Peripherals are a different matter — Apple notes you “may also need to shut down before connecting or unplugging certain peripheral devices” and, where it is unclear, points you at the documentation that came with the device rather than offering a general rule. Cables, no. Devices, sometimes. That is as far as the published answer goes, and this page will not extend it.
This page will not tell you that restarting fixes things, or how often to do it. Apple publishes the commands and their consequences and stops there, and every claim about restart frequency this page could add would be somebody’s habit rather than anybody’s measurement.
It also will not tell you to hold the power button when an app has frozen. That is a different problem with a smaller answer, and taking the whole machine down for it costs you everything else that was open.
The guides below go three ways from here: the smaller thing to try first, what the second hold leads to, and the point at which restarting is no longer the question.
Three ways in. If one app has frozen, take the first — do not restart at all.
Most reasons for reaching at the power button have a smaller answer that costs you nothing else that was open.
A hold of up to ten seconds, the unsaved changes it may cost, and the laptop-lid instruction that decides how fast it starts next time.
The second hold opens startup options, and behind it sits Recovery — Time Machine, a reinstall, and Disk Utility.
Not covered here. It will not tell you how often to restart a Mac. Neither of the two Apple pages read for this guide gives one, and every number in circulation is a habit that acquired a decimal point.
It will not call the power-button hold a restart. Apple documents a force shutdown, and calling it something else is how people end up holding a button waiting for a machine that has already finished turning off.
And it will not promise a restart fixes anything in particular. It clears what was running, which is a real and limited thing, and the guides above are about the cases where something smaller would have done. What holds instead is simple: every hold and timing here is Apple’s own, and the reopen-windows option still carries the sentence Apple attaches to it.
Written by Alberto Gulotta
Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.
Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.
Written on 22 August 2026 · last checked 23 September 2026.
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