How to force close an app on Mac

On a daily basis, there are many applications that are used on a Mac. But the operation is sometimes not perfect, and some important problems can be found in its performance. The most typical is the fact that the apps are caught or frozen, and cannot be closed. In this article we tell you how you will be able to close them easily.

How to force close an app on Mac

Why do apps get stuck?

As we have mentioned before, macOS is a system that, like others, is not perfect. But beyond the system itself, you can also find the poor compatibility of some applications. At first, when these apps work poorly, you can see how they slow down completely and in the end it can end up causing the specific application to completely crash, affecting the stability of the system in general. But one of the big questions that may come to your mind is why this happens. We analyze it in the following sections.

processor overload

One of the main points to take into account is the computer’s processor. It may be the case that a specific application requires a lot of processing capacity and this ultimately means that it generates great stress for the device. The problem comes in this case when you have many applications that are open and that consume a large amount of resources. It may be the case, for example, that you have a game open that has quite powerful graphics and also an application that acts as a video editor.

monitor actuvidad cpu

In these cases, if you have a processor that works in a limited way and is not very powerful, you are going to have a serious problem. Physically, it will not be possible to run programs that require more power than can be offered. That is why it is completely paralyzed without activated , and finally it will choose to have to force the program to exit. This is due to the fact that in most cases it is even difficult to close the program in a traditional way as it does not respond in any way.

Poor developer optimization

It is a fact that developers sometimes release applications that are not optimized. That is to say, when working on development they have not worked to make them work correctly with a specific version of macOS or simply because it is in a very early version it has several bugs . Obviously, it is something that the computer is not capable of managing, since sometimes bugs can end up collapsing the general hardware. It is really important to always have a good optimization in the apps in order for them to work smoothly.

Icono App Store

In this case, we are finally going to have some applications that during their operation in macOS are going to suffer numerous problems. This is something that can always be detected by searching the internet, especially in forums, and also on social networks. In order to finally solve it, you will have to choose to wait for an update that the developer releases, solving all these problems. Likewise, we recommend choosing to download apps from the App Store, which has different filters to avoid this in particular.

App incompatibility

Keep in mind that all applications have certain requirements to be used on a Mac. The main thing lies in the hardware you have and also in the version of the operating system. This is something really relevant, since if it is not compatible, you will find many programs frozen while it is being used on a daily basis. Finally, what is going to be achieved is that it can hardly be closed by traditional procedures . In the end you will be forced to have to force an application close.

In order to avoid this, you will always have to choose to carefully read all the requirements that the developers describe. It is true that a priori, when an app is not compatible, it will not be able to install correctly. But it is a reality that there are many methods to be able to install executables that a priori cannot be installed due to the requirements that are being proposed.

Steps to force close an app

In the event that you finally have an application that stops responding and is not going to be able to close normally, you will have to use the Force Quit function. A priori, we remind you that to close an application normally, you simply have to press Quit in the applications menu found in the menu bar. But you can also use the Command + Q combination . But as we say, it will not always be able to work correctly.

In this situation, you will have to choose to force the closing by pressing the Option + Command + Escape key combination. It can be said that this is the PC equivalent of a classic Control + Alt + Delete. Once this combination is pressed, you will finally have an app called Force Quit with a series of applications that are theoretically running at that moment. Simply, you will have to click on the app in question that has stopped working and click on Force quit in the lower right corner.

Keep in mind that in these cases it will even be possible to force the closure of Finder if it stops responding. This is something that can be quite curious, but it can always happen that the system ends up crashing in this way, in order to restart Finder automatically.

What to do if it won’t close

As is logical, on some occasions it will be possible to present the problem that the application cannot be forced to close. But in this case there are some procedures to always keep in mind if you are not going to be able to get out correctly. The first solution presented in these cases is to restart the operating system. Without a doubt, it is the most appropriate way to close all the processes that are open and that have been frozen. In this case, both the applications and other processes that are secondary and that can generate different conflicts are included.

At a second point, if the app does not close, but the rest of the system is working normally, you will have to choose to uninstall the application in question. This is something completely radical, but in the end it is a great solution for those applications that are not working correctly and you do not want to restart so as not to lose other work that you have active at that moment.