Mac guide

How to force quit on a Mac

Five ways to close an app that won’t respond, from the keyboard shortcut to Terminal, plus when a normal quit is the safer choice.

The short answer

Press Option + Command + Esc (⌥⌘⎋) together. In the Force Quit Applications window, select the app that isn’t responding and click Force Quit. You can also choose Force Quit from the Apple menu. Force quitting can lose unsaved changes, so try ⌘Q first.

Try a normal quit first

Press ⌘Q, or choose Quit from the app’s menu in the menu bar. A normal quit lets the app save changes and close its files properly. Force quitting stops the app immediately, so anything you haven’t saved in it may be lost.

If the app shows a spinning wait cursor, give it a little time. Apps sometimes pause while they finish a large save, export, or sync and then recover on their own.

Five ways to force quit

Keyboard shortcut: ⌥⌘⎋
Press Option, Command, and Esc together. On a Mac with a Touch Bar, Esc is on the left side of the Touch Bar. The Force Quit Applications window opens. Select the app and click Force Quit.
Apple menu
Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen and choose Force Quit. The same Force Quit Applications window opens.
Dock
Control-click (or right-click) the app’s icon in the Dock and choose Force Quit. If you only see Quit, hold Option and the menu item changes to Force Quit.
Activity Monitor
Open Activity Monitor from Applications → Utilities. Apps that aren’t responding appear in red with “(Not Responding)” next to the name. Select one, click the Stop button (the X in the toolbar), then choose Force Quit.
Terminal
Find the process ID with pgrep -l AppName, or read it from the PID column in Activity Monitor. Then run kill PID. If the process ignores that, kill -9 PID stops it immediately.

Quit vs. force quit, and what the Terminal options do

Activity Monitor’s Stop button offers both choices, and Apple describes the difference clearly:

Quit works like choosing Quit from the app’s menu. The process quits when it’s safe to do so. If quitting could cause data loss or interfere with another app, it doesn’t quit.
Force Quit quits the process immediately. If it has files open, you may lose data, and other apps that depend on it could have problems.

In Terminal, kill PID sends the TERM signal, which asks the process to end and lets it clean up. kill -9 PID sends KILL, which the process can’t catch or ignore. Use -9 only after a plain kill fails. killall AppName sends TERM to every process you own with that name, so check the name carefully first.

Leave system processes alone. Force quitting processes such as WindowServer or launchd can log you out or make your Mac unstable. Stick to apps and tools you started yourself. Quitting a process you don’t own may also ask for an administrator password.

If Finder or the whole Mac is stuck

Finder is always open, so it can’t be quit the usual way. If it stops responding, open the Force Quit Applications window, select Finder, and click Relaunch.

If force quit doesn’t work, choose Apple menu → Restart. If your Mac won’t restart, press and hold the power button (or Touch ID on laptops that have it) for up to 10 seconds until your Mac turns off. Then press and release it to turn your Mac back on. You’ll lose unsaved work in any open app, so use this as a last resort.

If apps freeze often, check whether your Mac is short on memory. When memory is tight, apps can stall while macOS makes room. See what to do when your Mac runs out of application memory and why your Mac might be running slow.

Where Spare fits

A gentler way to close background work.

Force quit is for an app that’s stuck. For work that’s still running fine in the background, like a dev server from this morning or an AI agent in another project, a graceful quit is usually safer.

Spare groups apps, development projects, and AI agents in your menu bar. You review what a stop request affects, then ask it to quit gracefully. Nothing stops automatically, and Spare never offers to stop macOS system processes. A stop can still interrupt a server or agent mid-task, so review it first.

Common questions

Force quit, answered.

What is the force quit shortcut on a Mac?

Option + Command + Esc. It opens the Force Quit Applications window, where you pick the app to close.

Is force quitting bad for my Mac?

It won’t harm your Mac. The risk is to the app’s data: anything unsaved in that app may be lost, and an app with open files may need to recover them next time.

Why doesn’t my app show up in the Force Quit window?

That window lists apps with a user interface. Background tools and command-line processes don’t appear there. Use Activity Monitor or Terminal to stop them.

How do I force quit when the keyboard shortcut doesn’t work?

Use the Apple menu, the Dock, or Activity Monitor. If the whole Mac is frozen, hold the power button for up to 10 seconds to turn it off.

Sources: Apple: How to force an app to quit on Mac, Apple: Quit a process in Activity Monitor, Apple: Use the Dock on Mac. Reviewed October 6, 2026.

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