Screen Saver Stuck On, How To Escape?
Today I encountered a problem with the screen-saver, in which it couldn't be deactivated in order to return to normal work. Normally, hitting escape will deactivate the screen-saver, but this did not work. I could see the mouse pointer over top of the screen-saver, however.
I use hot-corners to activate the screen-saver, and I could still use those to re-activate the screen-saver, but then the escape key brought me back to the screen-saver "underneath", instead of the normal desktop. I could also activate mission control/spaces, and it looked normal, but choosing a desktop just brought me back to the screen-saver.
So, a summary of strategies I tried to get the screensaver "unstuck":
- hitting escape
- moving the mouse
- re-activating and de-activating the screensaver via its hot corner
- activating mission control with a hotkey and choosing a desktop
- hitting cmd-opt-escape to try the force quit dialog
How can the screensaver be deactivated without shutting down the machine? I'm running MacOS 10.13.4.
Solution 1:
I encountered this problem for the last two days on Catalina on my iMac. I tried some suggested methods, but lacked an Apple keyboard, and didn't restart or use SSH.
What eventually worked for me, I didn't find elsewhere:
- Ctrl+Cmd+Q
- Esc
- login
Hitting Esc makes the screen go black, which I guess cancels the screensaver.
Solution 2:
If you have SSH enabled on your Mac and access to another computer on the same network you can start a terminal session and kill the screensaver. For example, I would open a terminal on my Linux PC and SSH into the Mac then run the following command:
killall ScreenSaverEngine
NOTE: This will not unlock the session if the screen is also locked. It will simply dim and reappear. This solution only applies after entering the password to unlock the screen but the screensaver does not dismiss.
Solution 3:
Lock & Unlock the Mac
Use the key-combo Control+Shift+Power on MacBooks or Control+Shift+Eject on Macs with a full-sized keyboard. This will lock the computer, requiring the usual login and password authentication. After re-authenticating, the machine should be back to normal.
Source: UWGB