my mac won't restart after big sur upgrade

Force shutdown via Power Button. Connect to charger and disconnect any external drives. Power on and hold Shift key immediately. This is Safe mode - it does a Repair Disk, clear cache files and only load required Apple Software. The computer will load slowly - that is normal. Once logged in the computer will look and feel slow - that is ok. Let it run this way for 5 - 7 minutes and then restart in Normal mode

Hello akirtley,

We understand that you're having trouble restarting your Mac. We'd be happy to assist!

Could you please provide us with some details of what happens when you attempt to restart? Do you see an error message?

Do you have any apps currently open? If so, does closing out of them help? How to force an app to quit on your Mac

Cheers!