finder not working

[geb724]

i am a new mac owner. in nov 2019 i purchased a 21.5-inch iMac with Retina 4K display. it has 16gb factory installed ram and 1tb hdd. the hdd has about 200gb remaining. the used portion is mostly data- music, videos and photos.

often times finder stoops working. i do a relaunch but it never opens again. i have to reboot the computer in order to get finder to work. in fact as i am typing this it is happening. i cannot get finder to open.

any reason why this is happening and any suggestions as to a fix?

 

[Ledgem]

I've had a few issues with Finder on macOS Catalina, but not where it completely stops working or can't be quit and relaunched. Performance has improved with 10.15.2.

I'd wonder if you have any system extensions or other programs that may be causing your problems. Are you on the latest operating system version? Do you have many external hard drives? External drives coming back online can lock the Finder up - one possibility to rule out that problem would be to go into your "Energy Saver" settings in the System Preferences and uncheck "put hard disks to sleep when possible." It's not as energy-friendly but it's worth a shot, unless you don't have any external drives.

If the problem is debilitating - and it sounds like it is - the fastest way to resolve it would probably be the "nuclear option" of reinstalling macOS fresh and setting up everything from scratch, as opposed to recovering from a Time Machine backup.

 

[canyelles]

It's possible that finder is running but you have no open finder windows.

When you try to start finder does it show finder as the app in the top menu bar? If so click File... New Finder Window