MacOS: Force Quit a Frozen Application

Summary

An application keeps freezing, won't close or is frozen. Or the spinning rainbow ball never goes away.

Body

Force Quit: 

Force Quit is similar to End Task in Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Delete) on Windows

  1. Open the Force Quit Applications menu
     
    1. Either press these three keys together: Option, Command, and Esc
      option, command, and escape buttons
    2. Or choose Force Quit from the Apple menu in the upper-left corner of your screen.
      Apple menu open with "Force quit" selected
  2. Select the app that's causing problems (which may say not responding next to it)
     
  3. Click Force Quit at the bottom
    Force quit applications window open with "Google Chrome (not responding)" highlighted and

Activity Monitor:

Activity Monitor is similar to more details version of Task Manager on Windows

  1. Open Activity Monitor
     
    1. Either go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor
       
    2. Or press Command+Spacebar and type "activity monitor", then select it from the results list
      Activity monitor window open showing a list of all processes running along with the resources they are using

If you select a process you can inspect its details (View > Inspect Process or Command+I) or kill it (View > Quit Process or Option+Command+Q). Since this displays system processes, be careful not to kill a process unless you're certain that doing so won't cause system problems.

Learn more about Activity Monitor's capabilities from Apple's Support page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201464

Details

Details

Article ID: 181
Created
Mon 3/2/20 12:56 PM
Modified
Wed 8/9/23 10:12 AM