Force Quit on Mac: Every Method

To force quit on Mac, press ⌥⌘⎋ (Option-Command-Escape), pick the frozen app, and click Force Quit. You can also hold Option and right-click its Dock icon, use Activity Monitor, or run killall AppName in Terminal. Force quitting ends the app at once and skips saving.

An app stops responding. The spinning beachball shows up. You press ⌘Q and nothing happens. macOS gives you a whole ladder of ways to close a stuck app, from a polite request to a signal the process cannot refuse. This is the hub page. Every method, when each one fits, and links to the deeper guides for specific apps and edge cases.

All the keys and menus below match current macOS (Sonoma and Sequoia). Start at the top of the list and work down. The moment the app closes, you are done.

Quit vs Force Quit: know the difference first

A normal Quit (⌘Q) is a request. The app gets a chance to flush its buffers, save open documents, and shut down in order. A Force Quit is not a request. macOS ends the process on the spot, and the app never runs its save-and-close code.

That one difference drives the whole guide. Force quitting can lose unsaved work, so it is the tool for a frozen or unresponsive app, not your everyday way to close things. When an app still responds, quit it normally. When it ignores you, escalate.

Method 1: a normal Quit (⌘Q)

Bring the app to the front, then press ⌘Q, or use the menu bar: [App Name] → Quit. This is the clean shutdown, and it is the only method that reliably keeps your work.

Give it a few seconds before you decide it is stuck. An app saving a large file or finishing an export can look frozen while it is just busy. If the cursor turns into the spinning beachball and stays there, or ⌘Q does nothing at all, the app is hung. Move down the ladder.

Method 2: the Force Quit window (⌥⌘⎋)

This is the fastest reliable fix, and the one most people mean by "force quit on Mac." Press ⌥⌘⎋ (Option-Command-Escape) to open the Force Quit Applications window. You can also reach it from the Apple menu () → Force Quit.

1. Find the stuck app in the list. A hung app usually reads (not responding) in red next to its name.
2. Select it and click Force Quit.
3. Confirm in the dialog.

One detail worth knowing: Finder cannot be quit, so in this window its button reads Relaunch. If your desktop or a Finder window is stuck, select Finder and click Relaunch to restart it without logging out. For the exact key combinations, see the force quit keyboard shortcut guide.

Method 3: force quit from the Dock

If only one app is misbehaving, the quickest route is its icon. Right-click (or Control-click) the app in the Dock.

1. Right-click the Dock icon to open its menu, which shows Quit.
2. Hold Option. Quit changes to Force Quit.
3. Click Force Quit while you keep holding Option.

This does the same thing as the Force Quit window without making you leave the app you are in. Full walkthrough, including what to do when the menu itself is frozen, lives in the force quit from the Dock guide.

Method 4: Activity Monitor for stubborn processes

When an app does not show up in the Force Quit window, or a background process is the real problem, open Activity Monitor (in Applications → Utilities, or search it with Spotlight via ⌘Space).

1. Use the search box in the top-right corner to filter by name and find the process.
2. Select it and click the Stop button (the octagon with an X) in the toolbar.
3. Choose Force Quit in the prompt to end it now.

Activity Monitor also shows CPU and memory per process, so it doubles as the place to spot whatever is pinned at high usage. Processes in red marked (Not Responding) are your suspects. Our full Activity Monitor guide covers reading those columns, and if a runaway process is eating your memory, see how to free up RAM on a slow Mac.

Method 5: kill it from Terminal (killall and kill -9)

When the GUI itself is unresponsive, drop to Terminal (in Applications → Utilities). This is the most direct way to end a process, and it works when everything else hangs.

The simplest command targets the app by name:

• killall Safari ends every process with that name. The name must match exactly and is case-sensitive. For names with spaces, quote it: killall "Google Chrome".

If a process ignores even that, find its process ID and send the hard signal:

1. Run ps aux | grep AppName to find the PID (the number in the second column).
2. Run kill -9 PID, swapping in that number, for example kill -9 1234.

kill -9 sends SIGKILL, a signal the process cannot catch, block, or ignore. It saves nothing. Reach for it only after a normal quit and killall have both failed.

Which method should you use?

A quick map so you pick the right tool instead of guessing:

• App still responds: ⌘Q. It is the only one that saves your work.
• App is frozen, beachball spinning: the Force Quit window (⌥⌘⎋) or the Dock trick. These cover most cases.
• App is missing from the Force Quit window, or a helper process is the culprit: Activity Monitor.
• Nothing in the GUI responds at all: Terminal with killall, then kill -9.

Working through a frozen app from scratch? The step-by-step guide for an app that will not quit runs this exact ladder. And if the Force Quit window itself does nothing, read what to do when force quit is not working.

A word on unsaved work

Every method past ⌘Q skips the app's save step. Before you force quit, ask yourself whether you have unsaved changes you care about. If the app is only slow, not truly frozen, waiting another thirty seconds can be cheaper than losing an hour of edits. Some apps auto-save (Pages, Notes, and many editors keep a recovery copy), but treat that as a bonus, not a guarantee. When in doubt, give a normal quit one honest try first.

The instant, no-menu way: MEGAKILL

If you force-quit apps all day, the menu dance gets old fast. MEGAKILL is a macOS menu-bar app (macOS 14 Sonoma or later) that folds the whole ladder into one click. Hold its shortcut (⌥⌘ by default, the option glyph plus the command glyph, configurable in the menu) and your cursor turns into a DOOM-style double-barrel shotgun. Click a frozen app's Dock icon and the whole app dies on the spot. No dialog, no PID hunting.

There is more aim to it than that. Shoot a single window and wound mode closes just that window, not the app. A shot on the Dock icon takes down the whole app. Right-click reloads, two shots per reload. It racks up kill streaks, shakes the screen, and plays real shotgun sounds, all of which you can toggle in the menu. Shooting a closed-but-pinned Dock app unpins it, and it can close floating pop-up windows too. Finder, the Dock, and critical system processes are shielded, so you cannot break your Mac no matter how trigger-happy you get. It is a notarized Developer ID app from outside the App Store, it auto-updates via Sparkle, and it is free for your first 100 kills. After that, a one-time 1.99 EUR keeps you firing.