How to Eject Stuck CD/DVD on Your Mac

Eject Stuck Cd Mac Featured

There’s nothing worse than trying to eject a CD or DVD from your Mac, only to get a big surprise: it won’t come out. It’s extremely frustrating to have a CD/DVD stuck in the CD-ROM drive of your computer.

If this has happened to you, here’s a quick method to help force it out.

1. Open Terminal.

2. Enter the one Terminal command below that applies to you and press enter.

For single optical drives:

drutil eject

For internal optical drives:

drutil eject internal

For external optical drives:

drutil eject external
Enter this simple command in terminal to eject a stuck CD/DVD.

3. Your CD or DVD should be ejected.

4. Quit Terminal.

Eject CDs From the Menu Bar

Here’s yet another easy way to eject CDs/DVDs from the menu bar.

1. Go to Finder and from the “Go” menu, select the “Go to Folder…” option (or just press Shift + Command + G in Finder).

Select the 'Go to Folder' option in the Go menu in Finder.

2. In the “Go to the folder:” prompt, copy and paste this line and then click “Go” (or press enter):

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/
Type this line into the 'Go to the folder' prompt.

3. The Menu Extras folder will display in Finder. Look for the “Eject.menu” option and double-click on it.

Double click the Eject.menu option.

You should now see an eject button on your menu bar. To eject an item, simply click on the eject button and select it from the list.

Image Credit: splorp

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