
If this is at or above 50% for any significant amount of time, it can be the cause of your problem. There will be a graphic display of CPU usage here. You can check on things like CPU and RAM to determine if your system is close to being overloaded, which can result in the rainbow spinning wheel.Ĭlick on the CPU tab from the Activity Monitor. Here, you’ll see several critical processes running on your computer. Click on Applications from the list on the left.To open Activity Monitor to check CPU usage and other performance indicators, follow these steps: You might need to force shut down your computer (we’ll show the steps for that in the next fix), but you can use Activity Monitor to see how much demand is on your system.
If your entire computer is freezing up or becoming unresponsive when you see the rainbow wheel, you have a more significant issue at hand than a faulty app.
The rainbow spinning wheel should be gone, and you can reopen the app.įix #3 – Using Activity Monitor to Check System Performance. Select the unresponsive app from the list of open apps. Press the Command, Option, and Escape keys at the same time to open the Force Quit menu. To open the Force Quit menu and close a non-responsive app, follow these steps: Since a frozen app prevents you from directly quitting from within the app itself, you’ll need to use the Force Quit menu to close it. If you are experiencing the rainbow spinning wheel after an app freezes, you’ll want to close out of that app to get rid of it. Fix #2 – Force Quit to Close a Frozen App So this is the first solution that I recommend you try as well. Restarting my Mac fixed the issue! I don’t know why, but it worked. This may sound like a no-brainer solution, but it works for me!Ī few days after I updated my MacBook Pro to macOS Monterey, the rainbow spinning wheel issue happened every 20 minutes or so, and sometimes was more frequent when I was typing in Google Docs. Regardless of why it is happening, you’ll want to get the issue resolved quickly so you can use your Mac at full performance. It could be a frozen app that isn’t working well with the new update, or it could be caused by your computer’s resources being heavily taxed and running out of CPU for typical performance.
The rainbow spinning wheel can be caused by various things, so it’s difficult to say exactly what is causing it to happen on your computer. Why Do I Get the Rainbow Spinning Wheel After Installing macOS Monterey? Fix #3 – Using Activity Monitor to Check System Performance.Fix #2 – Force Quit to Close a Frozen App.Why Do I Get the Rainbow Spinning Wheel After Installing macOS Monterey?.