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3 min fix Updated 9 Aug 2026Beginner

By , IT support technician

Quick Answer

Press Command + Option + Esc, select the app marked (not responding), then click Force Quit. Anything unsaved in that app is discarded — that is what separates Force Quit from a normal Quit.

How to Force Quit an App on a Mac ​

Applies to: macOS
Article Type: How-To
Last Updated: 2026-08-09

Summary ​

An app has stopped responding, the colour wheel spins over every click, and the red close button does nothing. This article closes that app four different ways, finds the culprit when the frozen app is not even on screen, and covers the honest last resort when the whole Mac has stopped rather than one program.

In this guide

Before You Start ​

  • Nothing to install and no admin rights. Every route in this article is built into macOS.
  • Force quitting discards whatever is unsaved in that one app. That is the entire difference between Quit and Force Quit: a normal quit gives the app a moment to write your work to disk, and a force quit does not wait. Everything already saved, every other open app, and the app's own settings and sign-in are untouched, and the app opens normally afterwards.
  • If several apps are sluggish rather than one being frozen, the problem is the Mac rather than the app — start with How to Fix a Slow Mac (The Spinning Beach Ball) instead.

Instructions ​

1. Tell a Busy App From a Frozen One ​

The spinning colour wheel means macOS is waiting for the app to answer, and waiting is sometimes the correct response.

Apple's spinning wait cursor — the rainbow disc most people call the beach ball — appears whenever an app has not responded to the system for a few seconds. An app rebuilding a 40 MB spreadsheet or opening a mailbox after a month offline is working, not broken, and force quitting it throws away the work it was in the middle of.

There is no official threshold, so use these:

  • You asked it to do something heavy — opening a large file, exporting, syncing a mailbox, searching a network drive. Give it two minutes. Watch the app's window title or progress bar; movement of any kind means it is alive.
  • The wheel appeared with no obvious trigger and nothing changes for two minutes. Treat it as frozen.
  • Other apps respond normally. Click a different app in the Dock. If that app opens menus and redraws its window, only one app is stuck and the rest of this article applies.
  • Nothing at all responds, including the Apple menu. Go straight to step 6.

Note: A window title reading Microsoft Excel (not responding) in the Force Quit Applications window is macOS's own verdict, not a guess. If macOS marks the app as not responding, waiting longer rarely changes the outcome.

2. Force Quit From the Keyboard ​

This is the route worth learning, because it works when a full-screen app has swallowed the menu bar and the Dock.

  1. Press Command + Option + Esc together. On a keyboard where the Option key is labelled Alt, that is the same key.
  2. A small window titled Force Quit Applications opens on top of everything else, listing every app you have open. It stays in front even when the frozen app is full screen.
  3. Click the app you want to close. An app macOS has given up on shows (not responding) in red beside its name.
  4. Click Force Quit at the bottom right of the window.
  5. A confirmation sheet drops down warning that you will lose unsaved changes. Click Force Quit again.
  6. The app's name disappears from the list and its windows vanish from the screen. Close the Force Quit Applications window with the red dot in its top-left corner.

Coming from Windows? This window is the Mac's answer to Ctrl + Shift + Esc — see How to Force Quit an App on Windows (Task Manager) for the version your colleagues are reading. One difference matters: Command + Option + Esc lists apps only, so it is far shorter than Task Manager and there is nothing in it you can break. The full process list lives in Activity Monitor, in step 5. For the rest of the translations, see Understanding Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows Users.

3. Force Quit a Single App From the Dock ​

When you already know which app is stuck, its Dock icon carries the same command without opening a window.

  1. Move the pointer to the app's icon in the Dock along the bottom (or side) of the screen. A frozen app keeps its icon and its dot.
  2. Control-click the icon — hold Control and click, or press the trackpad with two fingers, or right-click a mouse. A shortcut menu opens above the icon.
  3. Look at the bottom of that menu. When macOS has already noticed the app is unresponsive, the menu reads Force Quit. Click it.
  4. If the menu reads Quit instead, hold Option while the menu is open. The wording changes to Force Quit. Click it with Option still held.
  5. The icon's dot disappears and the app's windows close. On a Mac set to hide quit apps from the Dock, the icon itself disappears too.

4. Force Quit From the Apple Menu ​

The Apple menu opens the same window as the keyboard shortcut, which matters when a key is broken or another app has claimed the shortcut.

  1. Click the Apple menu — the apple in the top-left corner of the screen. It responds even while another app is frozen, because the menu bar belongs to macOS rather than to the app.
  2. Click Force Quit in the menu. Some versions of macOS label it Force Quit App Name, naming the app that is in front.
  3. The Force Quit Applications window opens. Continue from step 2 above — select the app, click Force Quit, confirm.

Note: If the Apple menu opens but nothing inside it responds to a click, the freeze has reached the part of macOS that draws menus. Skip to step 6.

5. Find an App That Is Not in the List Using Activity Monitor ​

Menu-bar tools, background helpers and apps with no window never appear in the Force Quit Applications window, and Activity Monitor is where they show up.

Use this when the Mac is grinding, the fans are loud, and the Force Quit Applications window shows nothing marked as not responding. It also answers the question the Force Quit window cannot: which of your apps is eating the machine.

  1. Press Command + Space, type Activity Monitor, and press Return. If Spotlight does not respond, open Finder, click Applications in the sidebar, open the Utilities folder, and double-click Activity Monitor.
  2. Click the CPU tab across the top of the window. A table of running processes fills the window.
  3. Click the % CPU column heading once, then again if needed, so the arrow points downward and the busiest process sits at the top. A process holding 90–100% for more than a minute or two while you are not doing anything is your culprit.
  4. Read the name in the Process Name column before touching anything. If it matches an app in your Dock — Microsoft Outlook, Google Chrome, zoom.us — carry on. If it is a name you do not recognise, such as kernel_task, it belongs to macOS itself; leave it alone and go to step 6 instead, because stopping a system process can sign you out or take the desktop down with it.
  5. Click the row once to select it, then click the Stop button in the toolbar at the top of the window.
  6. A dialog asks how to close it. Click Quit first — that is the polite request, and it lets the app save. Click Force Quit only if Quit changes nothing after about thirty seconds; the same unsaved-work rule from Before You Start applies.
  7. The row disappears from the table and the % CPU figure at the top of the list drops. The Mac becomes responsive again within a few seconds.

Tip: Click the Memory tab and sort by Memory the same way when the symptom is constant slowness rather than one stuck app. A browser holding several gigabytes with sixty tabs open is a normal reading, and closing tabs fixes it — that is a different problem, covered in How to Fix a Slow Mac (The Spinning Beach Ball).

6. Restart the Mac When Nothing on Screen Responds ​

Sometimes the frozen thing is the whole machine rather than one app, and a forced restart is the honest answer.

Work down this list and stop at the first thing that responds.

  1. Click the Apple menu, then click Restart. The menu bar often survives a freeze that has taken the rest of the screen, and this route closes your apps properly and keeps your unsaved work intact.
  2. In the confirmation dialog, clear the tickbox marked Reopen windows when logging back in, then click Restart. Leaving it ticked relaunches the app that froze the moment you sign back in.
  3. If the Apple menu will not open, press and hold the physical power button — the Touch ID button on a MacBook that has one — for up to ten seconds, until the screen goes black and the machine is silent. This discards unsaved work in every open app, not one, so use it only after the routes above have failed.
  4. Wait about ten seconds, then press and release the same button. The Apple logo appears and the Mac starts up normally.
  5. Sign in. macOS finishes any interrupted housekeeping in the background for a minute or two, so give it a moment before judging the speed.

When this keeps happening. A Mac that needs a forced shutdown more than once a fortnight has a fault worth reporting rather than a habit worth learning. Send IT a ticket: "My Mac locks up completely and needs a hard power-off roughly once a week. Please check the console logs and the hardware. The serial number is in Apple menu > About This Mac, and it last happened on [date] while I was using [app]."

7. Reopen the App and Recover What You Can ​

Force quitting is rarely the end of the story, because most work apps keep a recovery copy of their own.

  1. Open the app again from the Dock, from Launchpad, or with Command + Space and its name.
  2. In Word, Excel or PowerPoint, watch for a Document Recovery pane down the left side of the window listing the file as it stood at the last automatic save. Open that copy and save it under a new name before doing anything else — see Understanding AutoSave and AutoRecover in Office for how much it holds.
  3. In an Apple app such as Pages, Numbers or TextEdit, the document reopens where you left it. These apps write changes continuously rather than waiting for you to press Command + S.
  4. If the same app freezes again within minutes, close it and check for an update: open the App Store, click Updates in the sidebar, and install anything listed for that app. A repeat freeze in one app usually points at that app's version rather than at your Mac.

Troubleshooting ​

WARNING

Force quitting Finder is a special case. Finder draws your desktop, your icons and the Dock's file area, so quitting it clears the desktop for a moment. macOS restarts Finder immediately and by itself — which is why its button is labelled Relaunch rather than Force Quit — and no file, folder or setting is affected. Do not do this to a Mac that is mid-copy to a network drive or an external disk; the copy stops where it is and leaves a part-written file behind.

Symptom / ErrorPotential CauseSolution
Command + Option + Esc does nothingAnother app has claimed the shortcut, or the keyboard is unresponsiveOpen the same window from the Apple menu using step 4. If the menu bar is also dead, use step 6.
The app is missing from the Force Quit Applications windowIt runs in the menu bar or in the background, with no app windowFind it by name in Activity Monitor and stop it there, following step 5.
The app reappears frozen a few seconds after you force quit itIt is set to open at login, or a document is reopening itForce quit it again, then open System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions and remove it from Open at Login. Removing it stops the automatic start and changes nothing else — the app and its files stay exactly as they are.
Force Quit worked, but the app will not reopenA lock file left behind by the abrupt closeRestart the Mac using step 6. If it still refuses, send IT a ticket: "[App name] will not launch after a force quit — no window appears and the Dock icon bounces once. Please reinstall it on my Mac."
The pointer moves but nothing responds to clicksThe window server is stuck, not one appHold the power button for ten seconds as in step 6. Unsaved work in every open app is discarded, so try the Apple menu > Restart route first if the menu bar still opens.