How to force quit on Mac when an app won't respond

The quickest way: Option-Command-Esc

Try a normal quit first: press Command-Q, or choose the app's name › Quit in the menu bar. A normal quit lets the app save and tidy up. If it doesn't respond, force it:

1. Press Option-Command-Esc, all three keys together. On a keyboard made for Windows PCs, Apple says to press Alt instead of Option, and the Windows logo key or Ctrl instead of Command (Apple, Mac keyboard shortcuts). On a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar, Esc is at the left end of the Touch Bar.
2. The Force Quit Applications window opens. It lists your open apps; one that has stopped answering is marked "(not responding)".
3. Select the app and click Force Quit.
4. Confirm. macOS asks whether you want to force the app to quit and warns: "You will lose any unsaved changes."

Two details. If you select Finder, the button changes to Relaunch: Finder quits and opens again (Apple, How to force an app to quit on Mac). And the window accepts several apps at once (Command-click each one); macOS then asks you to confirm "the selected apps" together.

From the Apple menu

If the keyboard isn't getting through but the pointer still moves, click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen and choose Force Quit. It opens the same Force Quit Applications window as the shortcut, on macOS 15, 26 and 27 alike (Apple, If an app freezes or quits unexpectedly on Mac).

From the Dock

Apple's steps: "If an app stops responding, Control-click the app's icon, then choose Force Quit (you may lose unsaved changes)" (Apple, Use the Dock on Mac). Right-clicking opens the same menu. If the menu shows Quit rather than Force Quit, hold down Option while the menu is open and Quit changes to Force Quit. (Older versions of Apple's guide described this as Control-Option-click.)

From Activity Monitor: apps and background processes

The Force Quit window only lists apps. A frozen helper or background process, and some menu bar apps, need Activity Monitor, which also shows what each one is doing before you end it.

1. Open Activity Monitor: press Command-Space, type "Activity Monitor" and press Return.
2. Find the process: type part of its name in the search field, or click CPU and sort by % CPU. On macOS 26 and 27, Apple notes a process that isn't responding appears in red.
3. Select it and click the Stop button in the upper-left corner of the window.
4. Choose Quit, which Apple says is the same as choosing File › Quit, or Force Quit, which ends the process immediately; "If the process has files open, you may lose data" (Apple, Quit an app or process in Activity Monitor).

Pay attention to Activity Monitor's warnings. If the process belongs to macOS or another user, it says so ("If you quit this process, macOS may not operate correctly") and may ask for an administrator password. Quitting loginwindow logs you out on the spot. If you're coming from Windows, Mac Task Manager maps Task Manager's features to Activity Monitor, and how to read Activity Monitor explains the columns.

From Terminal: kill, killall and pkill

Terminal is useful when the desktop is stuck but Terminal still works, or when you're connected to the Mac from another computer. Open it from Applications › Utilities. You don't need sudo to end your own apps. The kill manual page notes that "only the super-user may send signals to other users' processes", and those other processes are mostly macOS's own, which are best left alone.

First, find the process and its ID (PID). This only reads:

pgrep -il safari

On our MacBook Pro with macOS 27.0.1 it printed 13 lines: 864 Safari, plus Safari's widget, notification and bookmarks helpers, several other Safari services and an ad blocker's extension. That's why you check before ending anything by name: a loose match catches more than you meant.

Then choose how hard to ask:

kill 864
kill -9 864

Plain kill sends the "software termination signal", which a program can catch and use to shut down cleanly. kill -9 sends KILL, which the manual page calls "non-catchable, non-ignorable": the process ends at once, like Force Quit, with no chance to save. Use it only when plain kill doesn't work.

To end an app by name, killall matches the exact process name, and -s shows what it would do without doing it:

killall -s Safari
killall Safari
killall "Google Chrome"

On our Mac the first line printed kill -term 864 and nothing else, confirming only the main Safari process would get the signal. The name is case-sensitive: killall -s safari found nothing. Quote names with spaces. pkill works like killall but matches patterns, so run the same pattern through pgrep -l first and check the list.

When Force Quit doesn't work

If the app stays on screen after Force Quit, or the whole Mac has stopped responding, work down this list. The later steps affect more than the stuck app, so stop as soon as something works.

1. Try another route. If the Force Quit window didn't do it, use Force Quit in Activity Monitor, or kill -9 with the app's PID in Terminal.
2. Restart from the Apple menu. Apple's advice when an app won't force quit is to restart: Apple menu › Restart (Apple). If the stuck app holds up the restart, macOS says it "failed to quit and is not responding" and offers Continue to force it and carry on.
3. If the Mac won't restart, force it off. Press and hold the power button "for up to 10 seconds, until your Mac turns off". On a Mac laptop with Touch ID, the Touch ID button is the power button. Then press and release it to turn the Mac on again (Apple).

On built-in keyboards without Touch ID there's also a shortcut: Control-Command-Power button forces a restart "without prompting to save any open and unsaved documents" (Apple).

If the app comes straight back

Some apps reopen the moment you quit them. Often that's not the app refusing to quit but a helper starting it again: a background agent installed with the app, or a menu bar component. Quit it from its own menu bar icon if it has one, then look in System Settings › General › Login Items & Extensions for the helper. How to stop apps opening on startup covers the helpers that list doesn't show. If an app freezes again every time you open it, update it, and check whether memory or disk space is running out: how to clear RAM on a Mac and Why is my Mac so slow? help there.

What you lose when you force quit

Force quitting is a normal, supported way to close a stuck app; the cost is that the app gets no chance to save. What you lose is whatever wasn't saved yet. Apple notes that "many apps on your Mac save your documents automatically while you work" (Apple, Create and work with documents on Mac), so in those apps you usually get the document back as it was when it was last saved automatically. Downloads, uploads and exports in progress stop and may need to start again.

If an app freezes often, Console keeps the evidence: open Console (in Applications › Utilities) and look under Crash Reports and Spin Reports for the app's name (Apple, View reports in Console). Those reports are what an app's developer will ask for.

How to close apps normally, including all at once

• Quit one app: Command-Q. Closing its windows with Command-W, or the red button, closes the window; many Mac apps keep running until you quit them.
• Quit every app at once: log out with Shift-Command-Q, which asks you to confirm, or restart. Both close every app, and apps ask you to save unsaved work first. Option-Shift-Command-Q logs out without asking (Apple).
• Background and menu bar apps: quit them from their menu bar icon, or from Activity Monitor. To stop them starting again at login, use Login Items & Extensions.

How Tend helps

Tend's free Energy & Apps list has Quit and Force Quit on every app, next to its CPU, memory and estimated watts, so you can see which app is stuck before you end it; Force Quit asks you to confirm first, and Tend won't end itself or the macOS processes that keep you logged in. With Pro, Tend can alert you when an app has stayed above 80% CPU for 5 minutes, and can slow a heavy app down by running it at low priority, as an alternative to quitting it.

Questions

Related guides

Sources

• Apple, How to force an app to quit on Mac
• Apple, Mac keyboard shortcuts
• Apple, If an app freezes or quits unexpectedly on Mac
• Apple, Use the Dock on Mac (macOS 15, 26 and 27; the macOS 10.15 version describes Control-Option-click)
• Apple, Quit an app or process in Activity Monitor on Mac
• Apple, Create and work with documents on Mac
• Apple, View reports in Console on Mac
• Apple, man kill, man killall and man pkill on macOS 27.0.1; window and dialog text read from macOS 27.0.1

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