When Force Quit Doesn’t Work - There’s Still Kill
Force Quit almost always works when an application gets confused and stops responding. But there might be an extremely rare occasion when Force Quit doesn’t do its job.
At that point you can use the kill command followed by the PID number of the locked-up application. Where do you find the PID? Use the top command. PID? Top? What are you talking about Murphy? It’s all in the extremely short screencast, so take a look.
Let’s also mention that Murphy doesn’t use Force Quit all that often. This sounds like the commercial - but the Mac just works. Maybe once every couple of weeks. Compare that to Murphy’s Windows machine, where Task Manager is in the Startup Items.
If there’s one thing that Microsoft really needs to fix it’s the way Windows handles non-responding applications. The little pop-up comes up asking if you really want to end the program. You say end now and it pops up again. And again. AARGH! Maybe it’s better in Vista? Let us know in the comments.
We’ll revisit the “top” command soon. But for now the screencast will tell you what you need to know about killing applications.
17. April 2007 at 7:51 am :
Is the ‘Quit process’ option in the Activity Monitor the same as one of the methods described above ?
Didn’t know about the ‘click-and-hold on the Dock icon’ trick. Nice one !
17. April 2007 at 1:41 pm :
How do you manage not to use Force Quit that often? I probably use it once every other day, and my Macbook isn’t my main machine. In fact, I used it right before reading your blog post to kill an errant application.
You should also mention killall.
17. April 2007 at 1:44 pm :
Oh - and stop bashing Microsofts applications for failing to quit. I had photobooth refusing every possible request to quit/forcequit/kill. I had to log off to get rid of photobooth.
17. April 2007 at 3:23 pm :
I think the reliability of a PC has a lot to do with who is using it and how much crap they are loading on it. A PC is like any other tool if you don’t take care of it, it won’t take care of you. I use the term PC for both Windows and Mac computers.
17. April 2007 at 4:51 pm :
Phil: Agreed. However, as an MCSE with extensive Windows use I’ve always been frustrated by the End Now pop-ups that turn cyclical.
RichB: I’m not bashing, I’m reporting years and years of experience. If your experience is different you’re welcome to comment on it. I only delete profane and personal attack-type comments.
My Macs have failed me too, and I’ve posted about that as well. Both platforms have their issues. In my experience the Mac is less problematic.
18. February 2009 at 11:03 am :
An easy way to search for an application’s PID instead of looking through top’s output, is to use:
ps aux | grep “application name”
(The application name is case sensitive). This will return two lines: One with the PID of the frozen application and one with the PID of the grep you just ran. You can then use kill with the abovementioned PID.
I’ve details this process here: http://www.geekology.co.za/blog/2009/02/mac-os-x-unix-quick-tip-find-and-kill-frozen-processes/
10. July 2009 at 4:02 pm :
Willem, if you use the -i option to grep, it will search case-insensitive.
14. July 2009 at 7:29 am :
Ah yes, thanks Ben, I missed that!
3. September 2009 at 7:51 pm :
I’m currently trying to get Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Indesign and Fetch and Mail to force quit because they won’t go away, to no avail, so I’m getting a “kick” out of this post. This happens to me once every day or two, and I don’t do anything at all strange or “out of the box” with my mac pro.
These applications already “think” they are quit, because they don’t show up in Activity Viewer.
That shouldn’t even be possible, right? oh well…rebooting again…
4. January 2010 at 3:24 am :
The “Kill” command would not work for me… it would quit other programs but “Disk Utility” stubbornly remains.