Eject Stuck CD/DVD: Use Terminal to Eject a Stuck CD/DVD

Having a CD or DVD stuck in your Mac or an optical drive isn't a fun situation. And while there are a number of ways to force the media to be ejected, most require you to shut down. If that presents a problem, you can use Terminal to force eject the CD or DVD, without shutting down your Mac.

Use Terminal to Eject a Stuck CD or DVD

1. Launch Terminal, located at /Applications/Utilities.


2. In the Terminal window, enter one of the following three commands:

If you have a single optical drive:

drutil eject

If you have both an internal and external optical drive, use the appropriate command below, depending on which drive has the stuck CD or DVD:

drutil eject internal

drutil eject external

3. Press return or enter after entering one of the above commands in Terminal.


4. The stuck CD or DVD should be ejected.


5. You can quit Terminal.

• using terminal
• macintosh troubleshooting
• eject
• stuck media