Key Takeaways

  • Force quitting an app on your Mac can help resolve freezing or unresponsiveness. Use the Dock, menu bar, keyboard shortcut, or Activity Monitor to force quit an app.
  • If you're still having trouble, consider force restarting or shutting down your Mac.
  • Insufficient RAM, app-specific issues, and incompatible apps can cause apps to freeze or stop responding. Limit open apps, update apps, or find replacements to address these issues.

Did your Mac suddenly freeze while using an app? Maybe you tried closing or quitting it, but it didn't respond. Luckily, you can force quit an app on your Mac and then reopen it to fix these issues.

The 4 Best Ways to Force Quit a Mac App

If you're having trouble with an app on your Mac, force quitting can help fix the issue. macOS gives you many different ways to do this.

Force Quit an App From the Dock

You can easily quit an app in the usual way from your Mac's Dock by Control-clicking and picking Quit. But you can also force quit an app from the Dock.

When you Control-click the app, hold down your Option key. You'll see that Quit will change to Force Quit in the shortcut menu.

Force-quitting an app via the Mac's Dock.

Force Quit an App From the Menu Bar

The next easiest way to force quit an app is by using your menu bar. Open the Apple menu at the top-left of your screen and then select Force Quit.

Force-quitting an app via the Apple menu.

This will open the Force Quit Applications window. Select the app and click the Force Quit button.

Force Quit an App With a Keyboard Shortcut

Rather than using the menu bar, you can use a keyboard shortcut to open the Force Quit Applications window.

Press Cmd + Option + Escape. Select the app and click Force Quit.

The Mac's Force Quit Applications window.

Force Quit an App With the Activity Monitor

The Activity Monitor on your Mac shows the processes that are running on your computer. If you've used a Windows machine before, Activity Monitor in macOS is like Task Manager on Windows.

Search and open Activity Monitor using Spotlight on your Mac (Command + Space). Make sure that the CPU tab is selected at the top. You'll see a list of live processes on your Mac, along with their details. Select the app in question, click the Stop (X) button at the top, and then choose Force Quit.

Force-quitting an app via the Activity Monitor.

Force Restart or Shut Down Your Mac

If you're still having problems quitting the app, other apps have also become unresponsive, or your Mac seems slow to respond overall, it may be best to force shut down or restart your Mac.

Check Your Mac's Login Items

You can have certain apps open up when you first log into your Mac. But if one of those troublesome apps is on the list, this can cause issues right from the get-go.

Due to this, you may see an app crash right after you power on your device. To fix this, remove or delay startup apps on your Mac by heading to System Settings > General > Login Items.

The Login Items section in System Settings on macOS Sonoma with the Add and Remove buttons highlighted

Why Do Apps Freeze or Stop Responding?

There are many issues that can cause a Mac app to become unresponsive. Here are just a few:

  • Insufficient RAM: Your Mac only has a limited amount of RAM to store your open apps. So, if you have many apps open simultaneously, it can slow your system and cause some apps to stop responding. Minimize the number of open apps or reboot your Mac to clear the RAM. If this seems to be a consistent problem, consider upgrading the RAM on your Mac.
  • App-specific issues: Unfortunately, not all apps are created equal, and some run into bugs that can cause them not to work properly. Although not a guarantee, you can reduce situations like this by downloading apps directly from the Mac App Store rather than third-party websites.
  • Incompatible apps: An unsupported app may completely freeze upon launch or refuse to open at all. The best way to avoid incompatibility issues is to make sure that you update every app on your Mac. If the developer hasn't released an update in a while, it's probably time to find a replacement.

Force Quit and Start Again

Hopefully, forcing an application to close isn't something you'll have to do often. But at least you now know a few different ways to force quit an app on your Mac if necessary.

If you can't force quit an app, you should shut down or restart your Mac. But if an app crashes immediately after powering your device on, remove it from the startup apps. If the problem persists, find a replacement.