I tried to take 86,000 pics from Photos, and accidentally dropped them onto the Desktop. Finder is now officially as per the title - not responding.
I can't do anything - can't open a folder, can't drop down a menu, nothing. I'm in the loop from ****.
Help please.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 13.6
Aha! No, you don't need to use Disk Utility. The main drive is already mounted. All the user has to do is type in the correct volume name, as you show for the Preferences folder. So, here's the whole thing again with the correct steps.
Start up in Recovery Mode. Intel method. Apple Silicon method.
On an Intel Mac, all you need to do restart and then immediately hold down the Command+R keys. Then enter your admin password if prompted.
On an Apple Silicon Mac, shut the Mac down. Then press and hold the power button until you get a screen showing any bootable volumes and Options. Double click the Options icon. Next, select the admin icon and click Next. Enter the admin password. You can't jump directly to desktop folder with ~/Desktop.
So, once at the Recovery Mode work screen, go to the top menu bar and launch Terminal. Type this (case doesn't matter here):
cd /volumes/drive_name/users/your_account/desktop
Examples: If your main drive has a space in the name, you have to use a backspace to parse the space character. So, a boot volume named My Mac would be:
cd /volumes/my\ mac/users/your_account/desktop
Mine is simply Sonoma, and your short account name is normally always one word. An admin of Jim Smith would then be jimsmith for the account name. Then the command would be:
cd /volumes/sonoma/users/jimsmith/desktop
To verify you're in the correct place, type this:
ls
That's a lower case L, not a capital i. It's short for list. You should see a very long list of files scroll by. If you do not see the desktop files, back up to the root of the drive with:
cd /
Start over. It may be easier to do this one step at a time since you can check each move. Like this:
cd /volumes/drive_name
ls
You should see everything at the root of the drive. Applications, Library, System and Users.
cd /users
ls
You should see Shared and all user account names.
cd /your_account
ls should then show Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Public and other typical folders.
cd /desktop
ls
Once you've verified you've seen thousands of image file names scroll by, you delete all of them in one command. What you type depends on what kind of file they are.
Make absolutely sure to NEVER type *.* . That means everything.
(in each example below, there's a space between rm and the file type)
You would use this command to remove all JPEG images ending in .jpg
rm *.jpg
If the file extension is .jpeg, then it would be:
rm *.jpeg
This for Apple HEIC images
rm *.heic
You can check what's left after a command by typing ls again.
When the images have all been removed, you can quit Terminal and restart the Mac normally. Or, while still in Terminal, simply enter reboot.
Aha! No, you don't need to use Disk Utility. The main drive is already mounted. All the user has to do is type in the correct volume name, as you show for the Preferences folder. So, here's the whole thing again with the correct steps.
Start up in Recovery Mode. Intel method. Apple Silicon method.
On an Intel Mac, all you need to do restart and then immediately hold down the Command+R keys. Then enter your admin password if prompted.
On an Apple Silicon Mac, shut the Mac down. Then press and hold the power button until you get a screen showing any bootable volumes and Options. Double click the Options icon. Next, select the admin icon and click Next. Enter the admin password. You can't jump directly to desktop folder with ~/Desktop.
So, once at the Recovery Mode work screen, go to the top menu bar and launch Terminal. Type this (case doesn't matter here):
cd /volumes/drive_name/users/your_account/desktop
Examples: If your main drive has a space in the name, you have to use a backspace to parse the space character. So, a boot volume named My Mac would be:
cd /volumes/my\ mac/users/your_account/desktop
Mine is simply Sonoma, and your short account name is normally always one word. An admin of Jim Smith would then be jimsmith for the account name. Then the command would be:
cd /volumes/sonoma/users/jimsmith/desktop
To verify you're in the correct place, type this:
ls
That's a lower case L, not a capital i. It's short for list. You should see a very long list of files scroll by. If you do not see the desktop files, back up to the root of the drive with:
cd /
Start over. It may be easier to do this one step at a time since you can check each move. Like this:
cd /volumes/drive_name
ls
You should see everything at the root of the drive. Applications, Library, System and Users.
cd /users
ls
You should see Shared and all user account names.
cd /your_account
ls should then show Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Public and other typical folders.
cd /desktop
ls
Once you've verified you've seen thousands of image file names scroll by, you delete all of them in one command. What you type depends on what kind of file they are.
Make absolutely sure to NEVER type *.* . That means everything.
(in each example below, there's a space between rm and the file type)
You would use this command to remove all JPEG images ending in .jpg
rm *.jpg
If the file extension is .jpeg, then it would be:
rm *.jpeg
This for Apple HEIC images
rm *.heic
You can check what's left after a command by typing ls again.
When the images have all been removed, you can quit Terminal and restart the Mac normally. Or, while still in Terminal, simply enter reboot.
Deleting the .plist files mentioned won't change anything. The files will still be on the desktop. What will work is what Matti Haveri alluded to: Removing the files via Terminal in Recovery Mode.
Start up in Recovery Mode. Intel method. Apple Silicon method.
Once at the work screen, go to the top menu bar and launch Terminal. Type this:
cd ~/Desktop
To verify you're in the correct place, type this:
ls
That's a lower case L, not a capital i. It's short for list. You should see a very long list of files scroll by.
Once you've verified you've seen thousands of image file names scroll by, you delete all of them in one command. What you type depends on what kind of file they are.
Make absolutely sure to NEVER type *.* . That means everything.
(in each example below, there's a space between rm and the file type)
You would use this command to remove all JPEG images ending in .jpg
rm *.jpg
If the file extension is .jpeg, then it would be:
rm *.jpeg
This for Apple HEIC images
rm *.heic
You can check what's left after a command by typing ls again.
When the images have all been removed, you can quit Terminal and restart the Mac normally.
If all else fails and you have another Mac you can give this a try:
1 - connect the two Macs according to this Apple document: Target Disk Mode.
2 - boot your problem Mac into Target Disk Mode and the other Mac normally
3 - access the problem Mac as an external hard drive from the second Mac.
4 - go to the Desktop of your user account and sort the files by Kind.
5 - select all image files and delete. Might be best to do it batches of 1K or so.
6 - when complete reboot the problem Mac normally and see if that did the job.
The last thing I ever tell anyone is to pull the power cord when all other means of interruption have already been tried — including pressing and holding the power button. I say last, because if Time Machine is in the middle of a backup, or even if it isn't, the rude shutdown may corrupt that external drive, and then one must boot into Recovery and use Disk Utility First Aid in hopes of repair success.
Weird. So Photos.app is no longer active and only Finder is stuck, right?
Maybe you could delete Finder's preference file at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist.
But if the Finder is stuck you might try to do it in the Terminal (maybe launch Terminal via Spotlight search) with:
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
If you can't reach Terminal that way, boot in to recovery mode (Command-R) and launch Terminal there via the menu.
Huge thanks, you all have a mix of responses which Damian from Apple and I worked through to one degree or another.
Trying to remove them through Terminal brought the argument the list was too long.
So...eventually we made Photos 'Public' by putting them on the shared drive (under Users), created a new User, and copied them across. The old User - which is still dysfuctional, despite about 20,000 pics being removed - will be deleted in a coupla days.
A three hour process of working through, many thanks to Apple for their help.
Option-click Finder in the Dock and relaunch it. Or force quit the offending apps via Activity Monitor. Or reboot the Mac. Or force shutdown the Mac by press & hold the power button.
But if Terminal is already present in the Dock, then it should be possible to launch it from there?
Maybe. All depends on how bogged down the OS is trying to render the desktop.
I did a test earlier today for a different topic and was creating over 60,000 files to see how the screen saver behaved with that many files. I could launch other apps, but trying to copy anything else would act as if I hadn't done anything until the current copy of 20,000+ files was done.
But if it does work, that would be a massive time saver and no need to use Recovery Mode at all. And from there, cd ~/Desktop does take you directly to that folder. Easy peasy in comparison.
> still in the same loop
Which same loop? Is the Finder still not responding? Did you try solving this in safe boot?
I guess if the Finder is unresponsive, then also launching Terminal via Spotlight does not work?
But if Terminal is already present in the Dock, then it should be possible to launch it from there?
FWIW the first thing I do after a clean install is to put Activity Monitor, Terminal, Console, BBEdit, KeePassXC, and Carbon Copy Cloner to the Dock.
At least on Intel Sonoma Recovery mode I can:
cd /Volumes/'HD - Data'[my internal disk name is HD]/Users/[me]/Desktop ... or to /Library/Preferences
> Finder is completely unresponsive. I don't know how the OP could avoid a forced shutdown
I guess Apple menu > Shut Down would not work then.
Maybe with a Terminal command like 'shutdown -h now'? Activity Monitor does not seem to have such shutdown command?
On top of that, my instructions don't work. At least, not on an Apple Silicon Mac.
I tested it just now to verify, and while I can get into Recovery Mode, login with my admin password and launch Terminal, I can't get to my own desktop!
cd /
takes me to the root of the drive.
cd Users
then puts me in that folder. But, ls only shows the Shared folder. I can't get Terminal to move into my own account.
It is much easier on an Intel Mac to do this. I just looked up how to achieve this on an Apple Silicon Mac, and the trick is when in Recovery Mode, you have to open Disk Utility first and mount the internal drive. Then you can get to your user account.
I should have realized something was up when I tried it the first time and cd /, followed by ls showed me a file named Install macOS Sonoma. That was a big clue I was looking at the hidden recovery partition, not the main volume. Duh!
Going to test again to verify and write up instructions that will work on Apple Silicon.
Hi Kurt,
Your instructions should still work when the OP connects to their session. It seems that they can log on. Using Terminal (with ls and rm commands) may be a way around Finder locking up.
I accidentally dropped 86000 pics onto the desktop and now Finder is not responding, what to do?
