How to Force Quit an App on Mac

An app has stopped responding. The spinning cursor will not go away and Quit from the menu does nothing. Force quitting ends the app immediately so you can relaunch it. Any unsaved work in that app is lost.

Press Cmd + Option + Esc

Press Cmd + Option + Esc. The Force Quit Applications window opens with a list of running apps. A hung app is usually marked "not responding" in red. Select it, click Force Quit, then confirm.

Use the Apple menu instead

If the shortcut does nothing, click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen and choose Force Quit. The same window opens. To force quit the Finder, select it in this list and the button changes to Relaunch.

Force quit from the Dock

Hold Option and right-click (or Control-click) the app's icon in the Dock. The Quit item at the bottom of the menu changes to Force Quit. Click it. This targets one app without opening the window.

Kill the process in Activity Monitor

Some apps do not show up in the Force Quit window, and background processes never do. Open Activity Monitor from Applications, Utilities. Type the app name in the search field at the top right, select the process, and click the Stop button (an X inside an octagon) in the toolbar. Choose Force Quit in the dialog that appears.

If the app still will not quit. Open Terminal and run the following, using the app's exact name as it appears in the Dock:

killall "AppName"

If that fails too, killall -9 "AppName" sends a stronger signal that the app cannot ignore. As a last resort, restart the Mac from the Apple menu.

If the whole Mac is frozen. Hold the power button (or Touch ID button) for about ten seconds until the screen goes black, wait a few seconds, then press it again to start up.