You’ll see a list of active processes, which should include your misbehaving app.You’ll find Activity Monitor in the Applications’ Utility folder. In the resulting list of apps, double-click on Utilities to open the folder, and then double-click on Activity Monitor. In your Finder, click on Applications in the left-hand menu.Use Spotlight Search to find “Activity Monitor,” or.If for any reason you can’t access the “Force Quit” menu, there is another way to quit the app using the Activity Monitor, which lists all of the active processes on your Mac. Use the “Force Quite Applications” menu to shut down an erring app. A pop-up will ask if you’re sure click on “Force Quit” to finally quit the app. Highlight the troublesome app, and click on the “Force Quit” button. You may be able to find “Force Quit” in the Apple drop-down menu.Įither way, this will bring up the “Force Quit Applications” box, which will have a list of currently active apps. Click on the Apple icon in the top-left corner and look for a choice that says “Force Quit” or.Again, there are a couple of ways to do this: However, if the app is frozen or just won’t go away, then you need to force a quit. Right-click on the app’s icon in the menu bar and select “Quit,” or.The first thing to do, of course, is try to quit the app normally: If that happens to you (and it might happen often if you’re playing with the latest Monterey betas), it’s time to quit the app. If your app is frozen, there’s a good chance that it’s eating up CPU resources, so a good sorting method to start with is ‘cpu.Apps on macOS are usually well-behaved, but there are times when they can stop working or freeze and slow down your entire Mac.
You can use modifiers to order the list by user-defined criteria ( see this manual page for all of the options). Instead, you can use the ‘top’ command to generate a list of running processes right in Terminal. Sometimes, your apps may freeze, leaving you frustrated as your apps don’t respond to any commands.
They’re easy to use, require little maintenance, and are great for people who don’t want to have to constantly troubleshoot issues with their computer.īut even the best operating systems can have problems. Macs and OS X have always had an “it just works” reputation. Just use one of these five simple force quit methods to get your Mac back up and running. If you run into any frozen or unresponsive apps on your Mac, don’t fret. While rare OS X bugs can cause extreme instability, forcing you to reboot your computer, most issues are easily resolved through methods like the ones listed above. It’s one of the main selling points for people that choose Macs over PCs. Generally, OS X offers an incredibly intuitive and user-friendly experience. As with the other force quit methods, the active application will immediately be force quit without warning. To use this method, make sure the frozen app is active and press and hold Command-Option-Shift-Escape. You’ll notice that this is simply the Force Quit Window shortcut with the Shift key modifier thrown in. If your app is frozen, there’s a good chance that it’s eating up CPU resources, so a good sorting method to start with is ‘cpu.’ Open a new Terminal window and type the following command: However, If you’re using Activity Monitor to find the PID, you might as well use it to force quit the app. The easiest way to find an app’s PID is via Activity Monitor, where it will be listed in the PID column. To use this method, you’ll need to determine the app’s Process ID (PID), a numeric value that OS X uses to keep track of each unique application. If you prefer a command line method for dealing with unresponsive apps, you can use the ‘kill’ command in Terminal. If that fails, use Force Quit, which will act the same way as the steps mentioned above. Try selecting Quit first, as this will allow you to gracefully quit the application and preserve your data. You’ll be presented with two options: Quit and Force Quit. Click on the ‘X’ button in the upper-left corner of the Activity Monitor window.Locate the frozen application in the processes list ( hint: you can use the search box in the upper-right portion of the window to filter the list).