macOS
Shine a spotlight on the solutions to your most irritating Mac problems
Quick-fire questions
Why doesn’t logging out fix problems with WindowServer?
> Logging a user out and back in used to restart
WindowServer, and could even fix it when it was in deep trouble. In more recent versions of macOS, it now runs in its own login session, so that trick doesn’t work anymore. Instead, you’ll need to restart your Mac to reset it.
Why is loginwindow still running after logging in?
> Although loginwindow does much more even before you log in, it’s responsible for handling the Force Quit dialog, and for logout, restart and shut down actions.
It therefore has to continue running once you have logged in, to listen for and manage those events, although that shouldn’t take much memory or CPU.
Unless there’s a good reason, enable FileVault, particularly on Intel Macs with a T2 chip and Apple silicon models.