Force Quit on Mac | 6 Easy Methods to Close Frozen Applications

Now, while working or performing multitasking or related stuff you may get stuck on the Mac-book due to some unresponsive application that will waste your time enough to fall back on the method of force quitting an app on your expensive mac.

You may be tempted to hit Cntrl + Alt+ Enter if you are a windows user but things are different here in Mac-book. Before you start hunting for the solutions and experimenting with different key combos, have a look at the solutions at your fingertips to force quit in Mac book.

Force Quit in Mac using the most conventional method – Apple Menu

This is the most conventional as well as an effective method to shut down unresponsive applications immediately.

Here are the steps that you need to follow

1. In the upper left corner of the screen, you can see a black apple icon in the Finder menu. You will need to click that button.
2. In the Dropdown menu that appears after clicking on the black icon, click on the Force Quit option.
3. It will now open a window providing a list of all the applications that are currently running on the system. You need to select the troublesome application and hit on the blue Force Quit option found at the bottom of the new redirected window.
4. Very often you may not know which application is causing trouble in which case you will be able to see a Not Responding message displayed just beside the name of the frozen application. Make sure to select that application and hit on the Force Quit button.

It’s that simple!

Force Quit in Mac using your keyboard

Ah! This comes as a relief to those who are comfortable with the forced shutting using keyboard shortcuts. You can now perform the previous method faster!

Just follow these steps to use your keyboard

1. Now instead of hovering over to the Finder menu, you can simply press and hold Command + Option + Esc. This will immediately bring up the Force Quit Application window.
2. Now select the frozen application causing you trouble and press on the blue Force Quit button found in the bottom of the window.

When can you or should you use this method? When you find that your touchpad is not working well or lagging, you can prefer to use the faster keyboard to access and close the application. Such Keyboard shortcuts do come in handy!

Force Quit in Mac using Activity Monitor

While Windows has a powerful task manager, Mac-book relishes in its Activity Monitor. As the name suggests it will display all the activities, applications, and processes that are running on the Mac along with the utilization percentage monitoring how much resources of the Mac are being currently used.

Follow the below steps to kill an application from the Activity monitor:

1. On your keyboard press Command + Space which will lead you to a function called Spotlight search which works similar to the search button in windows. You can alternatively access this function from the upper right corner of the screen which has a magnifying glass as the icon.
2. In the Spotlight Search option, start typing Activity Monitor till the Activity monitor is highlighted.
3. Hit enter once the option is highlighted.
4. Now in the Activity monitor which performs the same as the Task Manager, select the unresponsive application.
5. Head to the upper left corner of the Activity monitor and hit on the cross or X button.
6. It will display a dialog box ensuring your confirmation to force quit an application.
7. Hit on the Force Quit option which will quit the troublesome applications.

This method may sound complicated but it is not so. It is very similar to closing an unresponsive app through the Windows Task Manager. It is one of the most powerful ways to force quit a running application.

Also, you will be aware of what is causing the application to be unresponsive if you pay attention to the resource monitor highlighting the number of resources that the app was using.

Force Quit in Mac from the dock

Just like your task-bar in windows, the Apple doc can come in handy for force closing an app. If other options for force quitting fail to work, then this method can come in handy.

To use this method, follow these steps:

1. Hold down option key which is the Alt button on your keyboard and head over to the application in your dock with the touch-pad or mouse and right-click on it.
2. A drop down will appear. Click on the Force quit option.

This can prove to be the easiest method but not often recommended. Make sure to try the other above methods first.

Force Quitting in Mac using another keyboard shortcut

For some reason, your touch-pad fails to work which can cause you even more trouble than the unresponsive application.

There is only a single step for this method that will force quit in Mac. Just hold down Command + Option + Shift + Escape for a second or two to see the application quit.

But be sure that the unresponsive application is the foremost application or else your other application may quit and you may lose the data!

Force Quit in Mac via Terminal

Here we have arrived at the last resort. If none of the options above worked for you, don’t panic! There is still the most effective solution: use of command line.

Here are the steps to follow to quit via Terminal:

1. Either head to the Spotlight search or press Command + Space on your keyboard which will lead you to Spotlight Search.
2. Now type in Terminal.
3. A new window will open. In the window, type the terminal command:
   • Killall [application name]
   • Hit enter

However, before using this option, be cautious that you will lose all the unsaved data and the autosave feature fails to work in this case as it closes the application at the system level.

These are all the steps that you can take if you are struggling with an unresponsive and troublesome application on your Mac-book.