Messages, Text Edit not working, won't open.

Question

Messages, Text Edit not working, won't open.

Messages and Text Edit are not working, just beach balling. Screenshots won't save. Also Affinity Design Suite, can't open any of the applications either; I did just update them, so it may be a separate issue.

imac current software Sequoia 15.6.1, Finder 15.5. It's not responsive to clicking the Apple up in the top left corner, so i can't give any more details.

I opened Activity Monitor, but i have no idea how to interpret what's happening there. At the top (Process) it says "Other Use" at 99.9%. Everything else is 0.1 or thereabouts. Opening up Disk Utility gives me a blank window.

Any ideas? I desperately need Affinity NOW, it's used every single day.

iMac 24″

Posted on Dec 25, 2025 11:16 AM

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Answer 1

Dec 25, 2025 12:11 PM in response to ellenfromberkeley springs

Consider doing Shutdown and Restart, which clears some caches and reduces memory footprint.

Consider restarting into Safe Mode, which does a few-minutes-long disk check as its starts up, then loads up with very few add-ons loaded. One add-on NOT loaded is the accelerated display driver -- so screen updates in safe mode can be wonky and slow, but will ultimately render correctly.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Recycleur

Level 4

1,645 points

Dec 26, 2025 7:28 PM in response to ellenfromberkeley springs

In addition to Grant's answer, you may be interested to know that you can open a list of running applications with Option-Command-Esc, from which you can shut them down. It's especially useful for the ones not responding.

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