- How To Force Quit An Unresponsive App On Mac
- How To Force Quit On Keyboard Mac
- How To Force Quit An App On Mac
- How To Completely Force Quit An App Mac Pro
Earlier we have shared how to Force quit a frozen iPhone application and In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to quit a frozen application in Mac OS X. A lot of times I have found Safari to be unresponsive due to the Flash plugin crashing. Not just Safari, but any other app can unresponsive and when they do you will know just how to force quit them.
Select the application you want to force close on Mac. Now click on the Force Quit button. Using Dock Panel. To learn how to force quit an application on Mac using Dock, follow the option steps given below. Another secure method is to use the mouse together with your keyboard. Press the Alt key on your keyboard. The steps to force quit an app using the GUI are illustrated below: 1. Click on the “Apple” icon on the left corner of the menu bar and from the context-menu that drops down, click on “Force Quit”. Select the app that you want to Force Quit, and click on “Force Quit”. You will be prompted with an alert, asking if you want to. After that, press and hold the Option key. Now right-click on the app icon in the Dock. Here you should find an option called Force Quit. Use this option to force quit apps on Mac. #4: Force Quit Apps On Mac Using Terminal. If you cannot force quit apps on Mac using those aforementioned methods, you can do the same with the help of Terminal. The next best way to force quit an app in macOS is by using the Apple Menu. You can open the Apple Menu using the keyboard shortcut Command+Option+Esc. Next up, select the app in the Force Quit window, then click Force Quit. After that, press and hold the Option key. Now right-click on the app icon in the Dock. Here you should find an option called Force Quit. Use this option to force quit apps on Mac. #4: Force Quit Apps On Mac Using Terminal. If you cannot force quit apps on Mac using those aforementioned methods, you can do the same with the help of Terminal.
The easiest method is to right click on any application’s dock icon with Alt key pressed and then clicking on Force Quit. Apart from this there are two other ways of quitting frozen applications either via the Apple menu or using Activity Monitor. We are going to briefly look at each.
Quitting via Apple Menu or Keyboard Shortcut:
Point your mouse to the Apple menu in the upper left corner of your Mac’s screen and in the drop-down menu that appears click on “Force Quit…”
![How To Compleely Force Quit An App Mac How To Compleely Force Quit An App Mac](/uploads/1/3/4/0/134071071/188566862.png)
Now from the new windows that appears, select the unresponsive app and then click on Force Quit. In this example it is Safari that is not responding.
As you can already see for yourself in the first screenshot, this Force Quit window can also be brought up using the keyboard shortcut Command+Alt+Escape. Personally, this is what I find myself doing whenever an app creates trouble. You can also select multiple apps in this list by pressing the Shift key during selection and Force Quit all at once.
Quitting via Activity Monitor:
Launch Activity Monitor using Spotlight search or you can also find it under Applications > Utilities.
Select the unresponsive app marked in red and click on Quit process in top left corner. Now click on the Force quit button to end it.
For users migrating to Mac from Windows, imagine Activity Monitor as the equivalent of Task Manager in Windows. Force quit does the same thing that End Task does in the realm of Windows apps.
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When Mac apps misbehave, sometimes you need to force quit apps to shut down. This can happen when the app enters an infinite loop, crashes, hangs or otherwise ceases responding to user input. While it’s never an ideal way to close an application, it doesn’t generally hurt the app.
You won’t have a chance to save your work, of course, but with many Mac apps (especially Apple’s own macOS apps) auto-saving progress at regular intervals, that’s become less of an issue. So when you force quit apps on Mac, you will lose any data since your last save but won’t otherwise injure the program.
There are a couple of methods we can use to force quit apps on Mac which we will look at below.
1. The Simple Method to Force Quit Apps
The first, and simplest, way to try and force quit an app when it’s misbehaving is to use the Finder in macOS.
To do this, just click the Apple icon at top-left corner of the desktop, then select “Force Quit” from the list.
This will bring up the “Force Quit Applications” box. Find the app you want to force quit here, then click Force Quit at the bottom right corner.
2. Use the Dock
Force-quitting applications through the dock is the most familiar method for most users. It’s intuitively obvious and generally effective.
1. Right-click on the icon of the misbehaving application.
2. Hold down the Option key to reveal the “Force Quit” option.
3. Click “Force Quit” to force the application to close.
3. Use the Force Quit Menu
Your Mac also has a menu made specifically for forcing applications to shut down.
1. Click the Apple icon at the left of the menu bar at the top of your screen.
2. Select “Force Quit …” from the drop-down menu. You can also press Option + Command + Escape to open this menu.
3. Click on the name of the application in red with “(Not Responding)” next to it.
4. Click the “Force Quit” button in the bottom right of the window.
4. Use Activity Monitor to Force Quit Apps
Activity monitor also has the power to close apps. It lets you get a better handle on apps that have silently failed in the background. If you’re not actively using an application and it hits a weird hang, you might not know anything has happened. Because Activity Monitor shows the status of all open applications, you can see at a glance if any apps need to be force quit. You can also use it to quit processes, which are like sub-applications that don’t have Dock icons.
1. Open Activity Monitor by typing “Activity Monitor” into Spotlight.
2. Click on the application or process that shows in red text with “(Not Responding)” next to the application name.
How To Force Quit An Unresponsive App On Mac
3. Click the button with an X on a stop sign in the upper-left of the Activity Monitor window.
5. Use Terminal to Force Quit Apps
If you’re dealing with an application that won’t respond to force quit commands, Terminal’s kill command can shut the app down hard. It’s the most dramatic way to force an application or process to stop, but in our experience, it’s always effective.
1. Open Terminal by typing “Terminal” into Spotlight.
2. Type the following command to find the process number of the hanging application:
Replace [Application Name] with the name of the application you want to force quit. For example, to find Chrome, we would type the following:
This will simply show all the running applications that have that application’s name in their disk location. It won’t quit anything yet.
3. Scan the resulting list for the correct application or process. Take note of the four- or five-digit number shown before the process’s name. This is the process ID, or PID, which will be used to kill the application.
How To Force Quit On Keyboard Mac
Here we can see that Chrome has the PID 2745. If you get multiple results for the application, look for the one that ends in /Contents/MacOS/[Application Name].
4. Type kill followed by the PID from the last step. For example, kill 2745 will shut down the process with the PID 2745.
Conclusion
How To Force Quit An App On Mac
Force-quitting Mac applications shouldn’t be your primary method of closing applications, of course. But it’s a necessary tool for stopping applications that can no longer respond to user input.
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