How to force quit on a Mac: five ways, and what to do if it's frozen

To force quit an app on a Mac, press Option, Command and Escape together (Option-Command-Esc), select the app in the Force Quit Applications window and click Force Quit. The app closes at once, without asking you to save.

That shortcut is the one to remember. When it doesn't help, there are four other ways in: the Apple menu, the Dock, Activity Monitor and Terminal. Below are the steps for each, what you lose when you force quit, and what to do when the whole Mac has stopped responding rather than one app.

Should you quit, wait or force quit?

Try an ordinary quit first. Press Command-Q, or choose Quit from the app's menu, and give it a few seconds. A normal quit lets the app save its state and asks about unsaved documents. A force quit does neither.

If the app shows the spinning beach ball, it may be busy rather than stuck. An app exporting a long video or opening a huge file can stop answering clicks for a while and then recover on its own. Give it a minute or two, longer if you have unsaved work in it. The spinning wheel on a Mac covers how to tell busy from stuck. When waiting stops making sense, force quit.

Force quit with Option-Command-Escape

1. Press Option-Command-Esc. The Force Quit Applications window opens, listing your open apps.
2. Select the app. One that has stopped responding is usually marked as not responding in the list.
3. Click Force Quit, and confirm if macOS asks.

The window works even when the stuck app is in front and won't let you click anything else.

Finder is a special case. Select it and the button changes to Relaunch, because the Mac needs Finder running. Relaunching it doesn't touch your files.

Force quit from the Apple menu or the Dock

The Apple menu

Choose Apple menu > Force Quit. It opens the same Force Quit Applications window as the shortcut, which is handy when your keyboard is in another room or you simply can't remember the keys.

Hold Shift while the Apple menu is open and the item changes to Force Quit followed by the name of the app in front. Choosing that quits the front app straight away, with no list. On many Macs, pressing and holding Shift-Option-Command-Esc for a moment does the same thing from the keyboard. Make sure the stuck app really is the one in front before you use either.

The Dock

1. Control-click the app's icon in the Dock, or click it with two fingers on a trackpad.
2. Hold the Option key. Quit at the bottom of the menu changes to Force Quit.
3. Choose Force Quit.

When an app has stopped responding, its Dock menu often offers Force Quit without the Option key.

Force quit in Activity Monitor or Terminal

In Activity Monitor

Activity Monitor shows everything that is running, including helper processes and background tasks that never appear in the Force Quit window. It is also where you can see whether an app is working hard or doing nothing at all.

1. Open Activity Monitor. Press Command-Space, type Activity Monitor and press Return, or find it in Applications > Utilities.
2. Find the app. Type part of its name in the search field at the top right to filter the list. An app that has stopped responding shows "(Not Responding)" after its name.
3. Select it and click the Stop button, the X at the top of the window.
4. Choose Force Quit. (Quit asks the app to close politely, which a stuck app may ignore.)

Stick to apps and processes you recognize. Quitting a system process you don't know can log you out or make part of macOS restart itself.

From Terminal

For the brave, or for the times nothing on screen responds but Terminal is already open.

• killall "App Name" asks every process with exactly that name to stop. The name has to match the process name exactly, capitals included (usually what Activity Monitor shows), and the quotes matter if it has spaces.
• killall -s "App Name" shows what would be stopped without stopping anything. A good habit before the real thing.
• killall -9 "App Name" stops it immediately, with no chance to tidy up. Use it when the plain version doesn't work.
• pgrep -il name lists running processes whose names contain that word, with their process IDs, and kill -9 followed by an ID stops just that one.

Two well-known uses: killall Finder and killall Dock restart Finder and the Dock when they misbehave, and macOS reopens both straight away. Leave sudo out of all of these. Without it, you can only stop your own processes, which is exactly the safety net you want.

When force quit doesn't work

Sometimes an app disappears and comes straight back. Some background helpers are designed to relaunch themselves, which is normal. If an app refuses to close at all, try Activity Monitor, then killall -9. If that fails too, restart the Mac.

What do you lose when you force quit?

Anything you changed since the last save in that app. That is the whole cost, and for most apps it is smaller than it sounds.

• Apps that save as you go, which includes Pages, Numbers, Keynote, TextEdit and Preview, usually keep your work up to the last few moments. Reopen the app and check before you redo anything.
• Windows and tabs. Many apps offer to reopen what you had open when you start them again.
• Settings changed in that session may not stick if the app saves them only when it quits normally.
• A file being written at that exact moment can occasionally end up damaged. This is rare, and it is one more reason to give a busy app a minute first.

Force quitting doesn't harm your Mac, uninstall the app or delete its documents. If an app needs force quitting often, update it, and check that your Mac has enough disk space and memory.

What if the whole Mac is frozen?

First work out how frozen it is.

1. Move the pointer. If it moves and turns back into an arrow over the Dock or the desktop, only one app is stuck. Use the Force Quit window.
2. Try the shortcut anyway. Even when nothing seems to respond, Option-Command-Esc often still opens the window.
3. Wait a minute or two. A Mac that has run very short of memory or disk space can freeze for a while and then catch up.
4. Restart from the Apple menu if it opens. Apple menu > Restart gives apps a chance to save before the Mac goes down.
5. Hold the power button. If nothing responds at all, press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds until the screen goes black. On MacBooks with Touch ID, that is the Touch ID button. Wait a few seconds, then press it again to start up.

A forced shutdown loses unsaved work in every app, not just the stuck one, so it really is the last step. If whole-Mac freezes keep happening, update macOS in System Settings > General > Software Update, make room on the startup disk and look at what opens at login. If it still happens after that, Apple Support or an Apple Store can run diagnostics.

Where Notchpals fits

Notchpals can't force quit anything, and it has no idea when an app hangs. What it does watch is uptime. A Mac that has gone weeks without a restart, still holding apps and windows from last month, tends to hang more often, so once yours passes a week without one, the Tech care character in your crew suggests a restart. It comes during working hours and no more than once a week. With Otto, an octopus who always has more going on than eight arms can manage, it sounds like this:

OttoRestart when you can. Save first! I never save first. Learn from me.

Sound advice from an unreliable source. A restart is the tidy version of what a force quit does roughly: every app is asked to close, and each one gets its chance to save on the way out. If you are mid-task, press Later and deal with it at a better moment. How often you should restart your Mac explains why once a week is plenty.