How To Force Quit Applications On Mac

admin, How To , July 28th, 2022 , 0

Apps are a boon on your Mac as they simplify your tasks. However, sometimes some apps act up, and the only option you are left with is to force quit such applications. Force quitting an application can be the only option left when an application has become unresponsive and you cannot perform any operation on it. Let’s assume you have installed a malicious application in the worst-case scenario. If it freezes, it will continue to run in the background, and that is the time; force quitting would be a wise option.

Ways to Force Quit Application On Mac:

1. Force Quit Applications Using The Apple Menu

If an application stops responding and you want to force quit that application on Mac, one of the first things you can do is force quit using the Apple menu. To do that, follow the steps mentioned below –

1. Click on the Apple menu.

2. Select the Force Quit option.

3. Select the app that you want to quit.

2. An Efficient Way To Force Quit Apps On Mac

As we said before, if you cannot quit a stubborn app on Mac, it could also be that it is malicious and developed that way. A third-party Mac cleaner like CleanMyMac X can be a life savior. It’ll identify and help get rid of malware, and you can even force quit that application using CleanMyMac X.  to know more about CleanMyMac X, you can check out our inside-out review of CleanMyMac X.

First of all, you can check if the unresponsive application is malware or not. For this, click on the Malware Removal module under Protection, and then, if there are any threats, click on the Remove button on the right-hand side of the interface.

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Next up, from the left-hand pane, you can click on Optimization under Speed, head to Hung Applications or Heavy Consumers, and click on the Quit button to force quit the culprit application.

3. Use The Activity Monitor To Force Quit Applications On Mac

It could be that you cannot access the Apple menu for some reason. In that case, you can take the route of the activity monitor to force quit applications on Mac. Follow the below-mentioned steps for the same –

1. Type Activity Monitor in the spotlight search.

2. Select the application that you want to Force Quit.

3. Click on the X button at the top left corner of the Activity Monitor window.

4. Click on Force Quit.

4. Use The Keyboard Shortcut

Keyboard shortcuts are convenient. Let’s, for some reason, you cannot access the Apple Menu or the Activity Monitor or whatever the reason could be. In that case, you can use the keyboard shortcut Option + Command + Escape, and you will be able to force quit applications on Mac.

5. Force Quit Application Using Mac Terminal

If you are an advanced user, you can use the Mac terminal’s help to force quit an unresponsive application on Mac. To do that –

1. Launch the Terminal.

2. When the Terminal launches, type killall (application name). For instance, if you cannot quit an app named “Calendar,” you can type killall calendar.

3. Hit the Enter key.

It is important to note that if there are more than two words in an app’s name, then the command will killall “apps name,”  i.e., the command killall followed by the app’s name in quotation marks.

Wrap Up

As you can infer from the post above, there are times when force-quitting applications on Mac becomes a necessity, and we hope through this post, you have been able to quit unresponsive apps without any hassles. For more content, keep reading BestMacCleaner.