Mac Boot Freeze — Debug Options

Try in this order:

1. Safe Mode

• Shut down completely (hold power 10s)
• Turn on, immediately hold Shift until login screen
• Safe Mode disables login items, non-essential kexts, and clears caches
• If it boots → a login item or extension is the problem

2. Verbose Mode

• Shut down, turn on, hold Cmd+V
• Shows text log of what's happening — look for where it freezes
• Screenshot or note the last few lines before the hang

3. Recovery Mode

• Shut down, hold power button until "Loading startup options" appears
• Pick Options → macOS Recovery
• From there: Disk Utility → First Aid on your boot volume
• Fixes filesystem corruption (common cause of 5% freeze)

4. Reset NVRAM

• Shut down, turn on, immediately hold Option+Cmd+P+R for 20s
• Resets display, startup disk, and kernel cache settings

5. Single User / Terminal (Recovery)

• Boot to Recovery (step 3), open Terminal from Utilities menu
• fsck -fy — filesystem check
• log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "error"' --last 5m — check what errored

6. If nothing works

• Boot to Recovery → reinstall macOS (preserves data)
• Or boot to Recovery → restore from Time Machine

Most likely cause

Freezing at 5% after password = login items or a launch daemon crashing in a loop. Safe Mode is your best first move.