How to force ejection of a DVD

I have a DVD I was trying to rip, and handbrake froze up when scanning it. I tried to eject the DVD by dragging and dropping it to the trash, which trashed the icon, but didn't eject the DVD. I then forced Handbrake to quit, but without an icon on my desktop to select, how can I eject the DVD?


Reboot the computer while holding down the mouse button - if there's no physical issue preventing ejection, the disc will be ejected.

You can of course use terminal to try to force an eject, but this requires a little knowledge of text commands and is covered here:

  • Is there a Terminal command that will force open the DVD tray?

Open terminal.

drutil tray eject

DVD ejected.