This is the most dramatic way to force an application or process to stop, but in our experience it’s always effective. If you’re dealing with an application that won’t respond to the previous force quit methods, then the kill command (learn more about the Kill command here) can shut the app down hard. In the upper-left corner of the Activity Monitor window, select the “X.”.Select the application or process in question – this item should be labelled “Not Responding.”.Alternatively, you’ll find the Activity Monitor in “Applications -> Utilities.”

Open Activity Monitor by typing “Activity Monitor” into Spotlight.You can also use Activity Monitor to quit processes, which are like sub-applications that don’t have Dock icons.

Since Activity Monitor shows the status of all open applications, you can see at a glance whether any applications need to be force quit.

Force the application to close by clicking “Force Quit.”Īctivity Monitor also has the power to close applications, including apps that have silently failed in the background.

Hold down the Option key to reveal the “Force Quit” option.

In the Dock, right-click the icon of the misbehaving application.

Use the Dock #įorce-quitting an application through the Dock is the most familiar method for most users. To close this application, click the “Force Quit” button. This item will typically be labelled “(Not Responding).” Alternatively, you can open this menu by pressing Option + Command + Escape.Ĭlick on the name of the application in red. To do this, simply click the “Apple” icon in the upper-left corner of your screen and select “Force Quit.” This will launch the “Force Quit Applications” box. The first, and simplest, way to force quit an application is to use the Finder. This article covers a few methods to force quit a misbehaving macOS app. Many macOS applications auto-save their progress at regular intervals, but as a general rule, you should expect to lose all changes you made since you last saved. Force-closing generally doesn’t hurt the application, although you won’t have a chance to save your work.

How to force close on mac os