How to Force Quit Applications on a Mac
Posted February 17th, 2015 by Jason Lazzuri in Tech Tips
Have you ever experienced an application that wouldn't respond while using your Mac? Maybe you've encountered the spinning rainbow wheel icon while using your computer? Don't fear! OS X has a built-in feature called Force Quit. Force quitting an application will help you get unstuck in these situations.
Apps can crash or become unresponsive for a number of reasons. If this is happening on your Mac, you will notice that you are unable to click on anything within the application and you may see your cursor change to a spinning rainbow wheel icon. If this is the case, you should force quit out of the particular application that is giving you issues.
How to Force Quit
- Click on the Apple logo in the upper-left hand corner of the desktop.
- Select "Force Quit..."
- You will now see a list of all the open applications running on your Mac.
- Highlight the application you wish to quit (oftentimes, an application that is causing you issues will have the text "not responding" displayed next to it in the Force Quit window).
- Select "Force Quit".
Alternatively, you can pull up the Force Quit window using the hotkey command+option+esc. You can also select multiple applications at the same time and Force Quit them all at once.