Q&A for How to Force Quit an Application on a Mac

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What do I do if an application is not responding on a Mac?

Gonzalo Martinez
Computer Specialist
Gonzalo Martinez is the President of CleverTech, a tech repair business in San Jose, California founded in 2014. CleverTech LLC specializes in repairing Apple products. CleverTech pursues environmental responsibility by recycling aluminum, display assemblies, and the micro components on motherboards to reuse for future repairs. On average, they save 2 lbs - 3 lbs more electronic waste daily than the average computer repair store.

Gonzalo Martinez

Computer Specialist

Expert Answer

You can access the Force Quit option by pressing Command + Option + Escape.

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Question

Can't force quit an application on Mac?

wikiHow Staff Editor
Staff Answer
This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

wikiHow Staff Editor

Staff Answer

It is recommended that you try at least one, if not all, of the five methods for force quitting an application on a Mac as outlined above; one of these has the potential to work. If none of these work, there may be a fault with the app, the operating system or even your computer. It might be worth shutting down, especially if your computer has frozen as a whole, and restarting, to see whether this can make a difference.

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How do I kill an application in Mac terminal?

wikiHow Staff Editor
Staff Answer
This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

wikiHow Staff Editor

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Open the Terminal utility in the Utilities folder, type “top” and press Return. Select the program needing to be closed under the column COMMAND, noting that its name may be shortened. Find the PID - the number to the left of the program’s name and note it down. Type “q” to exit and return to the command line, then type “kill ###”, using the PID in place of the ###. If it still won’t respond, type “sudo kill -9###”, again using the PID in place of the ### in this example. More detail and images on this process are found above in this article.

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What do you do when an application is not responding on a Mac?

wikiHow Staff Editor
Staff Answer
This answer was written by one of our trained team of researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

wikiHow Staff Editor

Staff Answer

You could try any of the five suggested "force quit" methods outlined above in this article, either to open the "Force Quit" dialog box or to use the Terminal facility.

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When no programs will open, how do I shut down Firefox?

Margaret Althea Elvenshadow

Community Answer

Hold down Command and Option and press Escape.

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What do you do if the force quit menu crashes?

Community Answer

Try using the Terminal & Kill command. If that doesn't work,you can try using the command line as a surefire way to force an app or process to quit by issuing the low-level kill command. Launch the Terminal and type the following command: killall [processname]

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Question

How do I relaunch an application after I force quit it?

Margaret Althea Elvenshadow

Community Answer

If it's in your dock, just click on its icon. If not, click on the magnifying glass in the top right corner of your screen, and search for the name of the application. It should come up. Click on it, and it should open.

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