Quitting programs on Mac. Force terminate mac process. Several ways to force quit programs in Mac OS X. Using the Dock

Even with such a perfect computer as a Mac, troubles happen, namely, the program freezes, system errors... all this is probably familiar to you. Today we will tell you about several ways forced termination software processes.

Method 1: Window for force termination of programs.

To bring up this window, you need to press three keys together Command + Option + Escape. After this, all you have to do is select “Finish” and the program will be closed. This is a simplified version of the next method.

Method 2: System monitoring

To launch this utility you need to press the keys Command + Space. In the Spotlight window that appears, you need to enter the name of the program that you want to “kill”. After entering, a dialog box will appear in which you can find the frozen program by name (the name will be marked in red) or by identification number. Once you have selected the appropriate process, click End Process.

Method 3: Force Quit Using the Keyboard

To end the active application, you need to press and hold the keys for a few seconds Command + Option + Shift + Escape. Perhaps, of all the methods, this is the fastest.

Method 4: Force Quit Using the Apple Menu

To bring up the Apple menu, you need to press and hold Shift and double-click on the Apple logo in the top menu bar. After that, select the command “Force quit [application name].” not bad and, like the previous one, quite simple, but it doesn’t always work.

Method 5: Force Quit Using Dock

To force close an application, quickly and without any confirmation, you should move the mouse cursor over the icon of this program in the Dock and hold ALT(Option) click LMB.

Method 6: Process unloading terminal

If the previous methods did not help you in any way, then it is best to act decisively, i.e. take advantage command line(Terminal). Launch Terminal and enter the following command:

» killall [program name] «

This command will kill all processes associated with the specified application, so be careful.
If you know the application ID, you can use another command:

" kill -1 "
1 is directly the ID of the program that you are going to unload from memory.

Please understand that forcibly terminating some programs may result in data loss or system failure. system settings, That's why The best way To protect yourself, this is to save (relevant for relevant programs) your work more often.

Computers from Apple, or more precisely, the operating system from the aforementioned company called Mac OS X, are often famous for their trouble-free operation. And many people agree with this opinion - Macs really freeze and produce incomprehensible errors less often than computers running other OSes.

However, a 100% trouble-free computer has not yet been invented, and programs on Mac OS also sometimes freeze. This simple instruction will tell you what to do and how to disable or remove a frozen program on a Mac.

We recently talked about how, since problems with this application occur most often (as well as with the process). In general, the process is not very different from the instructions in the link above, so we’ll talk about it briefly.

So, if you have a program frozen on your Mac, you can close it in one of the following ways.

Closing through forced termination of programs

Apple's operating system has a feature similar to Windows Task Manager (). We will use it. Press the following key combination on your keyboard.

As a result, you will see a list box running applications. If any of them does not respond, select it and press the button "Complete" to close it.

As a result, the application will be closed and you can start it again.

Closing via context menu

The second method is even simpler than the first - to close a frozen program, use context menu Mac OS. Simply select the program that is not responding in the bottom panel of your Mac and right-click on it. In the context menu that opens, select the lowest item with the name "Complete".

As a result, the frozen application will be closed.

Closing a process through "System Monitor"

If none of the above options helped you and the program still does not close, you should try to stop its process using “System Monitor” - an analogue of the task manager on a Mac.

Open the built-in Mac OS program "System Monitoring"() and in the tab "CPU" Find the process responsible for the broken program or application. Usually its name is similar or completely similar to the name of the program. For example, our Battery Healt program froze. Find its process in the list and do double click by program name.

A window will open detailed information about the process. Find the button in it "Complete" and press it.

And lastly, confirm your intention to close the idle application by pressing the button "Force quit" in the OS X dialog box.

That's all. As a result of your actions, any process, even the most heavily hung one, should close in a few seconds.

The MacOS operating system, which is installed by default on MacBooks, iMacs and other Apple computers, is characterized by good stability. But there are problems with it, especially when using third party applications. A program on a Mac may freeze while running, requiring you to force it to close. There are several ways to force close a program on a Mac, and we will look at them in this article.

Using the “Force Quit Programs” utility

The best and most common way to terminate a stuck program on a Mac is to use the Force Quit Programs utility. This is a rather convenient tool that can be used not only in situations where applications freeze, but also in general when working with the system, when it is necessary for the program to close rather than minimize to the Dock.

To launch the force termination utility, press Command+Option+ESC on your keyboard. A utility window will open.

In it you need to select which specific program you want to finally close, and then click “Finish”. Immediately after this, the application will be closed.

Please note: If Finder is frozen on your Mac, you can use Force Quit to restart it rather than close it.

Using the Dock

The second easy way to force quit a program on a Mac is to issue a command through the Dock. The Dock shows all your open this moment applications. If one of them is frozen, you can terminate it through the program's context menu in the Dock.

To do this, right-click on the application icon in the Dock, after which a context menu will appear. Next, hold down the key on your keyboard Option (Alt) and the context menu will change, and the “Force Quit” option will appear in it.

Using the Mac's main menu

On a Mac, there is a main menu that runs through the entire system and appears at the top of the screen. Depending on the open application, the context of the menu changes, but one item remains unchanged - the apple in the very top left corner of the screen. This is Apple's main menu, through which you can go to settings, find out information about your Mac, and perform many other actions, including force quitting the program.

Click the apple icon in the upper left corner and select “Force Quit.” Depending on the open application, you will be able to force quit it or the “Force Quit Programs” utility discussed above will open.

Note: This method suitable in a situation where the keyboard on a Mac does not work and there is no way to call the force termination utility using a key combination.

Using the system monitoring utility

The system monitoring utility on Mac allows the user to find out various information about current work computer. Including, through it you can see how much a particular application consumes computer resources. If an application is frozen, the utility can be used to force it to terminate.

To launch the system monitoring utility, the easiest way is to open Spotlight search (Command+Space) and enter the name of the utility.

Once you open it, select the desired process and click on the circled cross in the upper left corner to end the program.

An information window will appear in which you can choose whether to simply terminate the application or forcefully terminate it. Select the “Force Quit” option, after which the program will close.

Using a keyboard shortcut

Apple offers MacOS users a large number of hotkeys for almost all popular options and functions. In particular, you can forcefully terminate the program using a combination of “hot keys”: Command+Option+Shift+ESC.

Does your Mac sometimes give you system errors? It happens, unfortunately. Loaded applications do not respond to commands in any way, and one or more unloaded processes remain in memory. These and many other problematic issues can be solved in just a couple of clicks. I strongly advise you to read the instructions below - this way you will save yourself from unnecessary hassle in the further use of your Mac.

Force quitting an active application from the keyboard

In order to force quit an active task in Mac OS X, you need to hold down the four Command + Option + Shift + Escape buttons for several seconds. This is the most quick way unload frozen software on Mac OS X.

Force Quit Programs window

Using the keyboard shortcut Command + Option + Escape, we make the “Force Quit Application” window appear, after which we select the “End” item to close the program. The operation performed is a more simplified version of the command in System Monitoring, which allows you to free several processes from memory at once.

Force termination of a program from the Dock

You need to perform the following combination: move the cursor over the icon in the Dock and, holding ALT (Option) on the keyboard, click the mouse. As a result, the frozen application will be forcibly closed, without additional confirmation.

Force quitting an app from the Apple menu

Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and click on the Apple logo in the top menu bar. Now select the command “Finish “...” forcibly”. This method is the easiest to remember. However, it happens that the computer does not react in any way to pressing these keys.

Using System Monitoring

In order to launch the System Monitoring system utility, press the Command + Space key combination and enter the name of the program in the Spotlight window. After the dialog box appears, we find the “frozen” application either by name (as a rule, tasks that are immune to the effects are marked in red) or by identification number (ID), and then click “End process”. This method unloading unnecessary software from memory is very similar to the one used in Windows, only instead of System Monitoring there is Task Manager.

Using the Terminal to unload processes

If none of the above methods helped you, the most effective method in this situation is to use the command line. Launch Terminal and enter one of the following commands:

Killall [process name]

For example, with the “killall Safari” command you will kill all processes associated with the Internet browser. And if you know the ID of the open application, which can be found using the “ps” or “ps aux” commands, you can unload the frozen program in the following way:

Kill -9 , where 9 is the aforementioned ID parameter.

You should be extremely careful when taking actions aimed at forcibly closing programs. Any termination of processes may cause a crash operating system. And if you also work with the command line, this can lead to the loss of unsaved data and system settings failure.

Clicking the Close button ⓧ in any program on Mac OS does not always lead to the desired result, that is, terminating the program, but is limited to minimizing it to the Dock. There is nothing wrong with this if there are few programs open, and even more so standard Mac OS, which consume a minimum amount of resources when minimized. What can't be said about third party programs, for example Photoshop, After Effects, Dreamweaver and other editors, but these can also be other running programs and applications that, even when minimized, consume a lot of resources and take up space on RAM. To completely close the program and unload it from memory, you need to exit the program; for this you can use the key combination ⌘Cmd + Q.

But what if you have a lot of programs open and Mac work Has it worsened significantly? There are 2 ways to quickly close everything open source software.

Quitting a program from the Dock

The easiest way would be, of course, to complete running programs and applications via the Dock. Right-click on the program icon and click Finish.

Often this method does not work the first time; when you right-click again, select Force Quit - this will surely complete it.

Forced termination of programs

The method is very convenient for terminating not all programs, but selectively. The window for forcing programs to end is called ⌘Cmd + Alt + ESC. Select in the window the desired program or application and click finish.

This feature is very useful in El Capitan 10.11.6 When the Finder freezes, there is no way to do without this window. And the Finder freezes regularly in this version of Mac OS X.

Restart user session

This method is very simple - you just need to log out the user session and log in again. To do this, press  in the menu bar and select End session "Username"

Then uncheck the box Reopen windows when you log in again and click End session

Now, when you log in to the system under your user, all previously opened programs will be closed, and RAM free.

Using Automator, create a rule for closing programs

Step 1 Open the Automator system utility

Step 2 In the program window, select the document type Program and click Select

Step 3 In the Libraries panel (left sidebar), find and drag Quit all programs onto the empty work area (right)

If you want it to not close all programs when using this applet, add exceptions. To do this, click the Add button and select the necessary programs

Step 4 Save new program With name Close all programs in the Programs folder. To do this, go to the menu bar and select File → Save or press ⌘Cmd + S

Now, to close all open programs on Mac, you just need to launch the created program from the Applications folder, through Launchpad, or add it to your desktop for easy use. If necessary, you can change the program icon to your own through the file properties Cmd + I