{"id":24369,"date":"2015-07-29T18:01:41","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T10:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hongkiat.com\/blog\/?p=24369"},"modified":"2022-10-31T19:13:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T11:13:31","slug":"force-quit-mac-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hongkiat.com\/blog\/force-quit-mac-app\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Force Quit Mac Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mac OS X is a great operating system. It\u2019s stable but it isn\u2019t perfect. Once in a while, the application you are working on may  freeze (or hang). If your application is not responding or you encounter the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spinning_pinwheel\">Spinning Beach Ball of Death<\/a>, chances are your application has crashed.<\/p>\n<p>If you don\u2019t want to wait it out, here are two ways how you can force quit an application that\u2019s not responding.<\/p>\n<h2>Force quit with keyboard shortcuts<\/h2>\n<p>If your application is not responding, do the following:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Press and hold the following keys: <span class=\"key\">Command<\/span> + <span class=\"key\">Option<\/span> + <span class=\"key\">Esc<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Choose the application you want to quit in the \u201cForce Quick Application\u201d dialogue box.<\/li>\n<li>Click \u201c<strong>Force Quit<\/strong>\u201c.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>Force quit via Terminal<\/h2>\n<p>Alternatively, you can quit an application using shell command via Terminal.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Launch Spotlight Search with <span class=\"key\">Command<\/span> + <span class=\"key\">Spacebar<\/span> and search for Terminal. Hit <span class=\"key\">Enter<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>In Terminal, type <code>ps -ax<\/code> then <span class=\"key\">Enter<\/span>. This will give you a list of all running process on your Mac along with other details like its respective <em>PID number<\/em>, <em>elapsed running time<\/em>, <em>process name<\/em> and <em>process location<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>To kill (force quit) a specific application, look for its name and note down the PID number.<\/li>\n<li>Type the following command in Terminal: <code>kill &lt;PID number&gt;<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Here\u2019s an example:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Upon typing in <code>ps -ax<\/code>, you may get a long list of output of running processes that look something like the screenshot below:<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.hongkiat.com\/uploads\/force-quit-mac-app\/ps-aux-long-list.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"454\"><\/figure>\n<p>Now, let\u2019s say we want to force quit Google Chrome, we can make use of the <code>grep<\/code> command in conjunction with our <code>ps -ax<\/code> to get exactly the information about the process we want.<\/p>\n<p>The full command would look like this:<\/p>\n<pre>ps -ax | grep &lt;application_name&gt;<\/pre>\n<p>and in our case, it will be something like this:<\/p>\n<pre>ps -ax | grep Chrome<\/pre>\n<p>and it should output  the following in Terminal:<\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.hongkiat.com\/uploads\/force-quit-mac-app\/ps-grep-chrome.jpg\" width=\"700\" height=\"53\"><\/figure>\n<p>Note that the  PID number for Google Chrome is 9635.<\/p>\n<p>Go ahead and type in the following command in Terminal:<\/p>\n<pre>kill 9635<\/pre>\n<p>This will terminate Google Chrome browser instantly. Hope this tutorial helps!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mac OS X is a great operating system. It\u2019s stable but it isn\u2019t perfect. Once in a while, the application you are working on may freeze (or hang). If your application is not responding or you encounter the Spinning Beach Ball of Death, chances are your application has crashed. If you don\u2019t want to wait&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3397],"tags":[3933],"topic":[4521],"class_list":["entry-content","is-maxi"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.8 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to Force Quit Mac Apps - Hongkiat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mac OS X is a great operating system. It&#039;s stable but it isn&#039;t perfect. Once in a while, the application you are working on may freeze (or hang). 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