- If you don’t already have CleanMyMac X installed on your Mac, download it here and install it. Choose Optimization in the sidebar. Then click View all Items. Select Hung Applications, then the app you want to quit and press Quit at the bottom of the window.
- With the process ID now identified, press Q to quit top, or open a new Terminal session, and type the following to force quit the app: kill PID In our iTunes example, we’d type: kill 5472. Press Return to execute the command and your app will be force quit. Keyboard Shortcut. Lastly, you can force quit an app vie a keyboard shortcut.
- Step 1: Move your cursor over the icon of the App you want to Force Quit Step 2: Hold Option / Shift and right click on the icon Step 3: Tap on Force Quit.
We’ve all seen the spinning beachball appear on our Mac’s screen and grown in frustration as we wait for the application that has hung to respond. Sometimes it doesn’t and we have to resort to force quit to shut it down and start again. But what happens when force quit is not working? We’ll answer that question and show you exactly what to do.
A quick replacement for Force Quit is found in CleanMyMac X. This program by MacPaw has a tool that switches off your hanging apps (and checks if they take up too much memory). We’ll show you how to use it later in the article.
Download the free version of CleanMyMac X here (app is notarized by Apple)
With Task Manager open, select the task you want to force quit, and then select “End Task.”. If you don’t see the name of the app in the list here, click “More Details” and find it in the list on the Processes tab. The frozen program will now close.
Why force quit?
Force quitting an application is a pretty drastic course of action. It tells the app to stop what it’s doing immediately and not to display any of the dialogs it might usually show you before it closes. However, it can be useful, despite the risk of losing data, if the app in question hangs and fails to respond for several minutes, and especially if it causes the rest of your Mac to hang or even just slow down.
How do you force quit?
There are several different ways to force quit an application.
- Press Command-Option-Escape, select the app from the box that opens, and press Force Quit.
- If you can access the Apple menu, click on it, choose Force Quit, select the app and press Force Quit.
- Right-click or Control-click on the app’s icon in the Dock and choose Force Quit.
Try to force quit it from the Dock
If you hold down Option and click on an app in the Dock, you will see an extra option for Force Quit. See if that one works.
What to do when an application won’t force quit
Sometimes none of the options above works and the app carries on hanging. Don’t worry, there are other things you can try.
Use Activity Monitor
Activity Monitor is designed to allow you to monitor the performance of processes on your Mac. However, it can also quit those processes and so force quit the apps running them.
- Go to Applications > Utilities and double-click Activity Monitor to launch it.
- Click the CPU column header to order processes according to the CPU cycles they are using.
- The process causing the application to hang will probably be at or near the top. Select it then press Quit Process.
- The app should now force quit.
Use CleanMyMac X’s Optimization module
- If you don’t already have CleanMyMac X installed on your Mac, download it here and install it.
- Choose Optimization in the sidebar. Then click View all Items.
- Select Hung Applications, then the app you want to quit and press Quit at the bottom of the window.
Disable Launch Agents
Many processes displayed by Force Quit performed by a class of applications called Launch Agents. It could be an automatic app updater that works invisibly in the background. The same tool we’ve just described has a sub-menu called Launch Agents (see the screenshot above). It will force quit the unwanted launch agents — when the regular Force Quit doesn’t work.
Use Terminal
If, for some reason, Activity Monitor doesn’t do the job, or you can’t launch it, try using Terminal instead.
- Go to Applications > Utilities and double-click Terminal to launch it.
- Type: ps -ax
- Press Return.
You will now see a list of running apps and processes in the Terminal window. Locate the application you want to force quit. (Its row will start /Applications/). Now, the quitting part:
- Note the number on the far left of the row, that’s the PID.
- Type: kill [PID] (replace [PID] with the number you noted down in step 6).
- Press Return.
Restart your Mac
If none of the methods we described above works and the application just won’t quit, you may need to restart your Mac. Normally, we’d tell you to click on the Apple menu and choose Restart. But if a misbehaving app won’t force quit, the chances are that it has grabbed most of the resources on your Mac and caused it to beachball, meaning you can’t click on the Apple menu. So here’s what to do.
- Press and hold the power button (if you have a MacBook with a Touch Bar, it’s the Touch ID button).
- Wait until you see the Apple logo on the screen.
- Release the power button and wait for your Mac to restart.
Check for an update to the misbehaving app
The first thing you should do after you restart is try and figure out why the application was misbehaving. And the first step in that process is to check to see if you’re running the latest version. Study planner app mac free.
If the app was downloaded from the App Store, you can check it there. If not, clicking on the [APP NAME] menu will normally display an option to check for updates.
However, there is an even easier way. CleanMyMac X (the app is available for a free download here) allows you, with a couple of clicks, to check multiple apps for updates at the same time, then with another click, update them.
- Choose Updater in the sidebar.
- Check the box next to the apps you want to update.
- Press Update.
It can be very frustrating when an application stops responding or starts beach balling. It’s even worse if the app brings your whole Mac to a standstill. However, force quitting the app usually solves the problem. There are a number of different ways to force quit apps, all of them described above. If you think your Mac’s force quit isn’t working, try a different method. Use the Optimize and Updater modules in CleanMyMac X regularly and you may never need to force quit an app again, and if you do, the methods we’ve described can help identify the culprit and quit it for you.
Although it is very rare, Mac users face the spinning ball kind of app freezing issue on their computer as well. Despite having such good configuration, you might have already encountered with such problem when your PC stopped working like usual. Like Windows, you need to close the non-responding application to fix the issue and run your Mac like nothing happened. Therefore, you should check out this article to know the best ways to force quit apps on Mac. No matter whether you have MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, you can certainly follow this tutorial and fix the frozen application issue.
#1: Use General Panel
There is a simple method that can be used to force quit apps on MacBook Pro as well as MacBook Air. It is quite easy, and most of the people use this method only to get the job done. The good thing is there is no need to use any third-party software or anything else since it can be done with the help of in-built options. However, in this case, you need to use the trackpad or mouse.
At first, click the Apple logo visible on the top-left corner of your screen or navigation bar. Here you can find an option called ‘Force Quit.’
Click on this option. It should open the Force Quit Applications panel. Now, you can choose an app, and click the Force Quit button.
That selected will be closed forcefully.
#2: How To Force Quit An App On Mac Without Mouse
If your trackpad or mouse pointer is frozen along with the application, and you want to force quit an app on Mac without mouse or trackpad, here is what you can do. This is same as the previous trick. In other words, you need to use a keyboard shortcut to open the Force Quit Applications panel. The keyboard shortcut is Option+Command+Esc. You need to press these three buttons together.
After that, the corresponding panel would appear. Now, you need to select the app using up/down arrow. If you want to close the selected app, hit the Return button.
Then you need to confirm the whole thing.
#3: Use Option Key
Option or Alt key plays a vital role in various cases, including this one. You can force quit an application without opening the Force Quit Applications window. All you need to do is to use the Option key on your keyboard. In this case, you need to use mouse s well as keyboard to get the job done.
To use this method, make sure you are on the frozen app window. 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. Like Command Prompt on Windows, Terminal is an in-built program for Mac. Being said that, you do not need to install anything to use Terminal. To close a running process using Terminal, you need to follow this method.
Open the Terminal first. After that, type ‘Top’ and hit the Return button. Following that, find out the corresponding PID number of the running process that you want to close.
Return to the Command Prompt panel, and type a command like this-
kill PID
The process will be closed immediately.
#5: Use Activity Monitor To Force Quit All Apps on Mac
You can use the Activity Monitor tool to force quit apps on Mac. No matter how many apps are frozen, you can certainly close them all with the help of Activity Monitor. This tool is mainly designed to check all the running processes and some system-related background processes. Add app launchpad mac.
Force Quit App Mac Shortcut
To utilise this tool, you need to open it first. Following that, select the process that you want to kill. After selecting, click the close button. Here you can find two options, i.e. Force Quit and Quit. You need to use the Force Quit option to get the job done.
Mac Force Quit Keystrokes
That’s all! These are some of the best methods to force quit apps on Mac. However, many people ask whether it is bad to force quit apps on Mac or not. The answer is yes and no. If you are working on a document in the Pages app and you force quit the app, your work won’t be saved. It would be deleted immediately. On the other hand, if you do not kill the app, you need to stay with a concurrent spinning ball.