{"id":46611,"date":"2025-02-03T16:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-02-03T21:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=46611"},"modified":"2025-02-12T13:34:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T18:34:23","slug":"what-to-do-when-macos-wont-let-you-unmount-a-volume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/03\/what-to-do-when-macos-wont-let-you-unmount-a-volume\/","title":{"rendered":"What to Do When macOS Won’t Let You Unmount a Volume"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When all else fails, the next step is to identify what’s using files on that volume or disk, so you can decide whether to force quit that process in Activity Monitor. Don’t do that blindly, as you could end up killing processes that your Mac does need to run.<\/p>

[…]<\/p>

If you’d rather use an app, then my personal favourite is Sloth from here<\/a>. Although it’s not notarized, it does everything that I’d want in terms of matching lsof<\/code> or fuser<\/code>’s features. Most importantly, if you click its padlock at the lower right and authenticate, it will show all processes running as root.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like Sloth, but it’s annoying to have to authenticate each time I use it. There’s a preference to have it prompt at launch so that at least you don’t have to click the little padlock icon each time (or forget to click it and get incorrect results).<\/p>\n

In practice, I almost never had problems with volumes that wouldn’t eject before Sequoia, and now it happens multiple times per day. The culprits are always mds<\/code> (Spotlight) and revisionsd<\/code> (file versioning) so there seems to be nothing to do except Force Eject<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n

See also: TidBITS-Talk<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n