Eject a CD/DVD from a Mac (Mini)

Hold down F12 for 2 seconds to eject a CD or DVD. Especially useful for those situations where the CD/DVD icon hasn’t appeared on the desktop for some reason.

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19 Comments

  1. …or buy an Apple keyboard and press “eject” ;)

    And another bonus is that the keys will be labelled correctly. When I tried a PC keyboard with mine the apparent layout was the same as for an Apple keyboard (i.e. similar to the US), unlike the keyboard I was using at the time. Much confusion.

  2. Im having no luck with either on a MS contoured keyboard.

    I will just pull out the old mac keyboard

  3. Doesnt work with a wireless keyboard either.
    It also says hit F12 or eject buton during startup but it does not work w/a wireless.

  4. Is a Tiger (Mac OSX 10.4) DVD stuck in the CD/DVD drive? And you have a headless Mac Mini (no monitor)?

    Plug in a Mac keyboard and follow these helpful steps (thank you Simon!):

    Reboot the Mac Mini, then keep pressing the Eject CD button (the top right key on a Mac keyboard) until the CD/DVD ejects. Phew!

    To reboot a Mac Mini the “hard” way, press and hold in on the power button on the back of the little machine until the power light goes off. This may take 8-10 seconds. Now press the power key quickly a second time to start up the Mac Mini. Immediately start pressing the Eject key.

    If your keyboard doesn’t have an eject key, this page says F12 serves a similar function. I havent tried it and am not sure.

    Now to research how to install Tiger on a 1.25Ghz G4 Mac Mini (early 2005) version…

  5. Clicclic–
    Thank you, thank you! You are a lifesaver with your suggestion to keep pressing the eject button on the keyboard while booting. Phew is right. I was just about to attack the case with putty knives when I found your post.
    One favor desires another, I did an archive and install of Tiger on my 1.42Ghz G4 Mini with no problems. I then just moved applications from the “previous systems” directory where necessary. Actually a lot easier than trying to eject the CD!
    Cheers!

  6. Thanks a lot really helpful… good to see the internet isn’t all theives and porn barons

  7. i have iMac and could not eject CD/DVD either using any of the command like holding F12, Mouse and Eject buttom. so what could be the other alternative.
    thanks

  8. Hi, fantastic, worked (pressing eject key with mac keyboard) I had erased the harddisk with the original os 10.4 and put in a cd from another mini (10.5) and it would not boot and not eject (because it started up from the 10.5 disk)
    This worked thanks

  9. Hi jjks – Unfortunately I don’t know of another way, which is not to say that there isn’t another way. Sorry I (we) couldn’t help.

    Hi Marc – Glad to be of assistance.

  10. We struggled through this and called the Apple store and they told us to hold the right mouse button down while starting up.

  11. For those of you with wireless keyboards, holding the right mouse button during boot will also work. Thanks guys.

  12. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I AM SAVED!!!!
    Awhile back I had deleted a bunch of programs on my mac for some reason,( ithink it was to create more disk space) and now I do not have any of the mac programs really…

    In an attempt to restore my mac to factory setting, I could not find the Mac Mini install disk, so i tried using an install disk from a newer mac computer, and when I restarted the computer like the instructions told me to, a bunch of weird error code came up and a little message said: “RESTART YOUR COMPUTER NOW!!.” I NEEDED TO EJECT THAT CD FAST!!
    I was about to rip open my mac and pull the cd out with tweezers!!
    The right mouse button did it for me!

    Your a life saver, thanks

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