2) Force Quit Currently Active Mac App with the Keyboard. Hold down Command+Option+Shift+Escape for a second or two until the app forcibly closes. Be sure to do this while the app you want to force quit is the foremost application on the Mac, as it will force quit whatever is active when held down. Learn how to force quit and close any application on Mac OS incase it hangs, freezes, or crashes. This works on any version of Mac –Mojave, High Sierra, or b.
Summary :
If an application freezes on your Mac computer, here we cover 4 ways to help you force quit the app on Mac. To recover lost data or mistakenly deleted files on a Mac computer, MiniTool software provides a professional Mac data recovery program.
When a program is not responding on your Mac computer, you can force quit the app to close it on Mac. How to do it? In this tutorial, we introduces 4 ways to help you force quit Mac.
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How to Force Quit an App on Mac – 4 Ways
Normally you can shut down an application on Mac by clicking Quit from the app menu bar, or you can press Command + Q key on the keyboard at the same time to close the app.
If you can’t close the app in the normal way, you can try the 4 ways below force an app to quit on Mac.
Method 1. Force Quit Mac Keyboard Shortcut
Is there a Ctrl + Alt + Delete Mac function to help force quit applications on Mac?
Unlike Windows, Mac computer doesn’t use the typical Ctrl + Alt + Delete keyboard shortcut to force close a program. The equivalent keyboard shortcut keys to open the Force Quit window on Mac is Command + Option + Esc.
Step 1. You can press Command + Option + Esc keys simultaneously on Mac to open Force Quit Applications dialog.
Step 2. Choose the app that doesn’t respond in Force Quit Applications window, and click Force Quit button to force quit the app on Mac.
Method 2. How to Force Quit on Mac from Apple Menu
Step 1. You can also click Apple icon at the top-left corner of Mac screen and select Force Quit from the Apple menu to access Force Quit Applications window.
Step 2. You can see the list of all running applications in Force Quit window. Find the frozen application and click it. Then hit Force Quit button to close it on Mac. How to get rid of app memory mac.
![Shut Shut](/uploads/1/3/4/0/134047581/415443968.jpg)
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Method 3. How to Force Quit on a Mac with Activity Monitor
We know that the Ctrl + Alt + Delete shortcut is used to open the Task Manager window. There is a similar alternative on Mac to monitor and end unresponsive process in task manager Mac. This alternative to Windows Task Manger is called Activity Monitor.
You can force kill an app on Mac using Activity Monitor.
Step 1. Open Activity Monitor on Mac. You can press Command + Space key at the same time to open Activity Monitor. You can also click the Spotlight icon at the upper-right corner of Mac screen, and type activity monitor to open it.
Step 2. Click the app you want to close, and click the X icon at the top-left corner to force a process to quit on Mac.
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Method 4. Mac Force Quit with Dock
You can find the app icon in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. Press the Option key on the keyboard and right-click the app icon in the Dock. The Quit option in the list would turn to Force Quit. Click Force Quit to force the application to shut down on Mac.
At last, if Force Quit Mac is not working, you can force restart Mac computer.
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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
How To Force Shut Down An App On Mac
How to add app icon to mac dock. 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. https://yellowdex819.weebly.com/how-to-magnify-apps-on-mac.html.
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.
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.
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
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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