Jun 16, 2020 iMac Pro (all models) Mac Pro introduced in 2013 or later. To upgrade from Lion or Mountain Lion, first upgrade to El Capitan, then upgrade to Catalina. To find your macOS version, Mac model, memory, and storage space, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu. If your Mac isn't compatible with macOS Catalina, the installer will let you know. Sep 07, 2018 You Can't install New MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 update on your Mac running on Old MacOS. Troubleshoot the issues using the quick fix guide that install or Upgrade. Sep 13, 2019 Updating macOS can be a real chore sometimes, especially if you get stuck in an update loop because there isn’t enough free space. Some users started the update but found themselves stuck in this “boot loop” after it failed, returning to the update installer page every time their Mac booted up again.
- Mac Pro Installing Software Update Stuck Windows
- Macbook Stuck On Update
- Macbook Pro Stuck On Installing Software Update
Summary: Here are solutions to fix Mac stuck on a loading bar screen error. Also, you'll know how to prevent data loss when Mac becomes slow or freezes on a loading bar screen.
Many Mac users have encountered a severe problem. That is iMac, MacBook or Mac stuck on loading bar screen while starting up or after updating macOS.
Probably, you are experiencing the same trouble. At first, you regard such a long boot time as a slow startup. But the Mac just got stuck on the loading screen for hours without any change. Then, you should not wait but do something.
You can follow this guide to fix Mac stuck on the loading bar issue macOS Catalina/Mojave/High Sierra.
- Table of contents
- 1. Why is my Mac stuck on the loading bar screen?
- 2. How do I fix Mac stuck on the loading screen issue?
- 3. Conclusion
To fix this issue, let's start with the causes.
Why is my Mac stuck on the loading bar screen?
Normally, Mac would show an Apple logo at startup when it finds your local startup disk. Then, based on if you have encrypted the startup disk, a loading bar appears after or before you log in to the Mac.
The loading bar indicates that the system is checking and loading macOS from the startup disk. It involves macOS structure, corn components, file system, security chip, etc.
However, if something is not going well, the progress bar will get stuck. For instance, the updated software is not compatible with your Mac models. Or the file system of the startup disk is corrupted after an unforeseen shutdown.
No matter what the reason is, this issue will prevent you from booting up your Mac.
How do I fix Mac is stuck on the loading screen issue?
In fact, you are not the only one whose Mac crashes during boot. Just check the users who are asking for help from forums:
- My iMac progress bar stuck at 100% after installing macOS Catalina. How to fix?
- Macbook gets stuck on Apple logo screen with a loading bar. Any suggestions? (running Mojave).
- Macbook Pro won't load after an update. Help!
- My MacBook Air freezes on a fully loaded progress bar for one hour! Any help is appreciated!
- iMac is stuck on a black startup screen with a status bar. What to do?
The good news is, even though your Mac stuck on login screen, you can fix this issue with 7 available solutions. Now, let's try them one by one and fix the Mac stuck on loading bar screen issue.
Solution 1: Restart your Mac when Mac progress bar stuck
Whenever you encounter the boot problem, you can try rebooting the computer. Though not always work, it won't hurt.
When your Mac is stuck on loading screen, you cannot shut it down from the Apple menu. But you can press and hold the power button for a few seconds to turn off the Mac. Then, you can disconnect all peripheral devices from your Mac. This will isolate the problem and leave the Mac alone
After a few minutes, you can restart the Mac again. Does your Mac boot past the loading bar screen?
Solution 2: Boot your Mac in Safe Mode
Mac stuck on startup screen with status bar could be caused by software conflict or incompatibility. So, to confirm it, you can boot the Mac into Safe Mode. A Safe boot will prevent your Mac launching unnecessary programs and login items at startup. It also does a basic check of your startup disk.
To boot your Mac into Safe Mode, you need to:
- Step 1: Force your Mac to shut down.
- Step 2: Press and hold the Shift key while tapping the power button to start your computer.
- Step 3: Release the Shift key untill you see the Apple logo and loading bar.
If your Mac loads successfully in Safe Mode, it's surely a software or firmware conflict. To find out the exact conflicting program, you need to restart your Mac in Verbose mode with these steps.
- Step 1: Restart your Mac and immediately hold Command + V at startup.
- Step 2: Let the keys go after you see the Apple logo.
Instead of a plain loading bar, you will see the booting progress report in Verbose mode. With the live report, it's easier to find out which software stops your Mac from starting up. Then, you can simply reboot your Mac into Safe Mode and get rid of it.
Solution 3: Reset NVRAM/PRAM
PRAM or NVRAM is a non-volatile random access memory. It is used to store system settings on Mac, including startup disk selection and recent kernel panic information.
So, when Mac won't boot after macOS update or get stuck at 100% progress bar,resetting NVRAM/PRAM might help. You can simply restart your Mac and simultaneously press Command + Option+ P + R keys. Then, you can restart it again.
Solution 4: Reset the SMC
SMC, short for System Management Controller, is incorporated into the Mac's motherboard. It is used to control a number of Mac core functions, including sudden motion sensor and thermal management. Typically, SMC reset helps to resolve Mac unresponsive issues related to power and hardware.
Mac Pro Installing Software Update Stuck Windows
To reset the SMC on a Mac computer, you need to at first determine whether the battery is removable or not. The process of resetting SMC of a non-removable battery is quite different.
1. Reset SMC when MacBook Air and MacBook Pro stuck on loading screen
If the battery is removable:
- Step 1: Turn off your Mac.
- Step 2: Remove the battery.
- Step 3: Press the power button and hold it for a few seconds.
- Step 4: Reinstall the battery.
- Step 5: Press the power button to turn on your Mac.
If the battery is non-removable:
- Step 1: Shut down your Mac.
- Step 2: Press Shift+Control+Option on your keyboard and press the power button at the same time.
- Step 3: Hold these keys for 10 seconds.
- Step 4: Release the keys.
- Step 5: Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.
2. Reset SMC when Mac Mini, Mac Pro and iMac stuck on loading screen
- Step 1: Shut down your Mac.
- Step 2: Unplug a power cord.
- Step 3: Wait 15 seconds.
- Step 4: Plug the power cord in.
- Step 5: Wait several seconds and turn on your computer by pressing a power button.
Solution 5: Repair startup disk in macOS Recovery Mode
Sometimes, the Mac progress bar is not loading further because the startup disk is corrupted. Fortunately, First Aid is a built-in disk repair tool on your Mac. It helps if there is a disk error on Mac internal hard drive. So you can give it a try to fix the Mac stuck on apple logo with loading bar issue.
If First Aid successfully found errors and repaired them, you can restart your Mac. Disk Utility helps Mac boot up, and your Mac desktop or MacBook should boot past the loading bar screen and turn on then.
Solution 6: Reformat the startup disk and reinstall macOS
But sometimes, even First Aid won't work if the startup disk is severely corrupted. In this case, you might want to erase the startup disk in macOS Recovery mode. Disk erasure will reformat the hard drive with a new file system.
This usually will fix this issue. However, at the same time, it will wipe all your files off the drive. So, if you have important files on this Mac, you should first rescue data from the corrupted hard drive. It's necessary especially if you don't have any backup.
If you don't worry about data loss, you can proceed with reformatting the Mac hard drive.
1. How to reformat the corrupted startup drive?
- Step 1: Restart your Mac into macOS Recovery mode.
- Step 2: Select Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities menu and click Continue.
- Step 3: Select the Mac hard drive (often named Macintosh HD or Apple SSD) from the left sidebar.
- Step 4: After clicking Erase on the top, you need to name it as Macintosh HD, and then give it a scheme and format.
- Step 5: Click Erase to confirm this operation, and then wait it to complete.
Now, you have an empty but workable Mac hard drive. To boot your Mac again, you need to continue with the next part.
2. How to reinstall macOS in macOS Recovery mode?
After erasing the Mac internal hard drive in macOS Recovery mode, you can reinstall a new operating system.
Hopefully, the Mac stuck on loading bar/Mac progress bar stuck at 100% issue can be fixed.
Macbook Stuck On Update
Solution 7: Restore macOS with local APFS snapshot
It's inevitable that a macOS update is not compatible with your Machine. So if your Mac gets stuck on the loading bar screen because of a recent macOS update, you may want to revert to the previous state.
If your Mac won't boot past Apple logo or have other problems after macOS Catalina update, you may want to downgrade it.
Fortunately, in macOS High Sierra or later, an APFS snapshot is saved before installing any macOS update. And you could restore your previous OS with the APFS snapshot. But this may erase your hard drive, so you also need to back up data on the unbootable Mac first.
How can I rescue data when Mac won't boot past the loading bar?
Sometimes, the Mac won't load progress bar because of startup disk corruption.Then, you need to at first reformat the startup drive and reinstall macOS. This process will wipe all the files on the Mac internal hard drive. Thus, it causes data loss if you don't have a backup copy.
But never mind. You can rescue data from the unbootable Mac with iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. It helps you get files off efficiently when Mac is not turning on.
iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is one of the best Mac data recovery tools. It can recover data from corrupted Macintosh HD and external drive. It also can retrieve data from unmountable Macitosh HD, external drive, and recover data from Apple T2 secured Mac. This software can recover photos, videos, documents, music files and emails.
To rescue your files from the unbootable Mac, you need to run iBoysoft Data Recovery in macOS Recovery mode.
If your Mac keeps stuck on loading bar and won't boot up/turn on at all, you can follow this complete tutorial to make it work again
Conclusion:
It's terrible if your Mac freezes on a loading bar at startup. It could get stuck on a screen that you have never seen before, like a folder with question mark at startup. But anyway, if a Mac is stuck with Apple logo on loading bar or login screen, you have no access to files stored on it.
If unfortunately, you encountered such issue, you should first check if you have a backup of your data. If not, iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac will be a good helper to recover lost data from the unbootable Mac. Then, you can try out the solutions above one by one till you can boot up your Mac as normal.
Installing a new macOS version should be fairly straightforward. Simply download the OS update, follow the on-screen prompts, and you should be all set. This trend has started since Cheetah and continues with Catalina.
Even with the easy OS installation process, it’s always a wise idea to know exactly how to do a clean install of macOS. This way, you can easily give your Mac a fresh start in the event that something comes up.
When doing a clean install, the first thing you should do is create a backup of your files. For this, you can use Time Machine or other similar alternatives. As soon as you have a backup, you should be all set to do a clean install of a new macOS version like Catalina.
But it is worth noting that even if you have removed possible backup problems out of your way, there are still installation errors you need to prepare for. Let’s know more about these problems in the succeeding sections.
Common macOS Catalina Installation Problems
There are many problems you may come across while installing macOS Catalina. These include the following:
1. Compatibility Issues
Not all Macs support Catalina. Only Macs released in 2012 or later are compatible with macOS Catalina. Here is a complete list of Macs that support the latest macOS version:
- 12” MacBook (2015 or later)
- MacBook Air (2012 or later)
- MacBook Pro (2012 or later)
- Mac Mini (2012 or later)
- iMac (2012 or later)
- iMac Pro (2017)
- Mac Pro (2013 or later)
Macbook Pro Stuck On Installing Software Update
2. Disk Space Problems
To be able to download the macOS Catalina installer, you need to have 6.5 GB of free storage space. However, you have to be aware that the amount of disk space required may vary depending on the type of installation that you are doing: a clean install or an upgrade.
Generally, a macOS Catalina clean install requires 20 GB of storage space. Then again, you will need more to allocate space for other apps and future updates. An upgrade, on the other hand, requires 6.5 GB of free space plus a few more gigabytes for the files the installer will have to copy to the startup disk. For an upgrade, it’s hard to give a rough estimate about the total free space needed as many factors need to be taken into account. But to be safe, make sure you have at least 25 GB of free storage space available.
If you are tight on space and can’t proceed with the installation, you might need to install a reliable tool to get rid of unnecessary files on your Mac. One that we recommend is TweakBit MacRepair. In just a few clicks, this tool can identify any space hoggers on your system.
3. macOS Catalina Could Not Be Installed
Even on Macs that are fully compatible with Catalina, this problem may be triggered by the wrong Date & Time configuration. Be sure that you have set the correct date and time. Better yet, use the “Set date and time automatically” option.
4. Mac Is Frozen While Installing Catalina
If your Mac is stuck while installing Catalina, there could be many reasons behind it. While some are associated with the software, others are hardware-related. But regardless of what’s causing this problem, we can guarantee you that there is a fix. You’ll know more about it below.
What to Do When Catalina Installation Is Stuck?
Is your Mac stuck in the “Setting up Your Mac” part during Catalina installation? We suggest that you try the fixes below:
1. Restart Your Mac.
Oftentimes, your Mac gets stuck while installing Catalina because there are system processes that simply need to be restarted. All you need to do is simply restart your Mac.
You have three ways to restart your Mac. The first one requires you to press the Power button and select Restart from the list of options. The second one is about pressing the Apple key and hitting Restart. Lastly, to restart your Mac, you can press the CTRL + CMD + Eject combo.
2. Reset the NVRAM and SMC.
The NVRAM and SMC store information required when your Mac starts up. Once any of them becomes corrupted, it can cause your machine to freeze. Though resetting the NVRAM and SMC doesn’t always guarantee fixing the problem, it’s still worth trying as it has worked for some.
Here’s how to reset the NVRAM and SMC of a Mac:
- Turn off your Mac.
- Press and hold the Power button for at least 10 seconds.
- Release it and wait for a few seconds more before restarting your computer.
- If the issue persists, switch off your Mac again.
- Remove the power cord.
- Wait for 15 seconds before reconnecting the power cord.
- Turn on your Mac.
3. Check the Log Screen.
When you’re stuck in the “Setting Up Your Mac” part of the Catalina installation, you might want to check the Log screen. There might be missing files that need to be installed. If it shows nothing is happening, then proceed to the next possible fix.
4. Install the Combo Update Instead.
If you are having problems with installing Catalina, you can visit Apple’s website and download the Combo update. This includes all the important files required to update to the latest macOS. Downloading and installing this Combo update will replace all outdated system files.
5. Seek Help from Experts.
When all else fails, your last resort is to seek help from the experts. Take your Mac to the nearest Apple Center and have it checked by an Apple Genius. If your Mac is still under warranty, then great because this service might not cost you a lot. Otherwise, prepare to spend a few hundred bucks.
If visiting an Apple Center is not a good idea in your case, then you can reach out to Apple’s online support team. Head over to their website, answer a few questions, and you might just be given a quick fix.
Conclusion
Catalina installation issues are inevitable, especially considering that the macOS version is new. Lots of features still need to be checked and improved, and errors may not have been seen by the QA teams. But even if installation issues are common, they should not stop you from trying the features that the new OS has to offer. After all, the developers of the OS are constantly working to improve Catalina and are regularly releasing patches with fixes to commonly reported bugs and errors. As long as you take note of the important details and try out different solutions being shared on forums and blogs, then you should be able to enjoy Catalina the way other Mac users do.
Did you have other issues while installing macOS Catalina? How did you fix them? Leave a comment below!