Here is what we can do when our Mac does not want to leave the screen saver without having to restart it

The screen saver of our Mac no longer has the task of protecting our monitor during periods of inactivity, but it adds a touch of color and above all, it prevents others from seeing what we are doing on our Mac during our absence. So far so good, the fun starts when we sit down in front of the Mac and, for some reason the screensaver refuses to disappear.

Four resources before the reset

Fortunately, we have several resources to put in place when this happens. Go ahead that this situation is not, far from it, common, and that a simple restart solves the error, but what we want to avoid is precisely to go through this restart. We want resolve the situation in a non-disruptive manner. Here is what we can do:

1. If we find ourselves in front of a MacBook, the best we can do is lower the lid, wait about 15 seconds, and reopen it. After that, a keystroke on any key should take us to the desktop, without further ado.
2. Another option is to lock the screen, something we can also do on a MacBook and will use as a first resort on Macs without a built-in monitor. To lock the screen we press Command (⌘) + Control (⌃) + Q. Then we press the esc key to turn off the screen and after about 15 seconds we press any key to enter in our Mac.
3. If that doesn’t work, we can hold down the key Mac power button to put it to sleep. To do this we will hold it down for just a few seconds, if we hold it longer we will turn it off. After sleeping and waiting 15 seconds, we should be able to use our Mac again.
4. The next option is already a little more powerful, in this case we will press Command (⌘) + Shift (⇧) + Q and then Enter to Sign out. Then we will connect normally.
5. Finally, if none of this works, the easiest way will be to restart the Mac. Yes, it takes a while and we may have to reopen the apps we were using, but this definitely fixes the error. To do this, just hold down the power button for about 10 seconds, until the computer turns off, and then turn it back on.

As we said at the beginning, the truth is that this is a very unusual situation. But quite annoying when, sometimes, it happens. A situation that, depending on the work we are doing with the Mac, we will want to solve without having to resort to a restart, in the end, not all apps have autosave informations.

If the situation were to recur, beyond a very specific case, the recommendation would go through check if we have an update waiting to be installed, especially on older operating systems. Like any error caused by software, we always have the peace of mind that the solution is within our reach.

Either way, if we’ve been out of the office for five minutes and come back the Mac seems to want to go on vacation, we now have resources with which we can continue to work with him quickly.

Imagen | Photography