App Not Responding on Mac? How to Quit It Safely

An app that has stopped responding isn't necessarily crashed — it's usually blocked, waiting on something that hasn't come back. That matters because the gentler ways of closing it let it save your work, and the forceful ones don't. Here's the full set, in the order worth trying them.

Before you quit it: try to save

Two things are worth thirty seconds each. First, press ⌘ + S and wait — an app that's blocked on one operation sometimes queues the save and performs it when it unblocks. Second, press ⌘ + Q. A normal quit asks the app to close and gives it the chance to write your document; it works more often than people expect, particularly if you wait a full minute.

Also worth knowing: most modern Mac apps use Auto Save and Versions, so there may be far less at risk than you think. Documents in Pages, Numbers, Keynote, TextEdit and Preview are saved continuously.

1. The Force Quit window

Press ⌘ + Option + Esc, or choose Apple menu → Force Quit. The window is drawn by the system rather than by any app, so it appears even when the screen is otherwise stuck.

Apps shown as (not responding) in red are the ones that have stopped answering. Select one and click Force Quit. If the Finder is the problem, the button says Relaunch instead — that's safe, and macOS brings it straight back.

2. Force quit from the Dock

Hold Option and right-click (or Control-click) the app's icon in the Dock. The Quit item becomes Force Quit. Useful when the app's own windows are unresponsive but the Dock still works. More on the Dock method, and quitting everything at once.

3. The keyboard shortcut with no dialog

Hold ⌘ + Option + Shift + Esc for about three seconds. This force quits the frontmost app immediately, with no confirmation. It's the fastest option and therefore the easiest to regret — make sure the right app is in front.

4. Activity Monitor

Open Activity Monitor from /Applications/Utilities, find the process (red text means not responding), select it, and click the ✕ button. Choose Quit first; only use Force Quit if that does nothing.

Activity Monitor is also where you find out why it hung: with the process selected, choose Sample Process from the toolbar menu to see what it's blocked on. The beach ball guide explains how to read it, and the Activity Monitor guide covers the rest of the app.

5. Terminal

When nothing graphical responds — including over SSH from another machine — Terminal still works.

# Quit every process with this name (quote names containing spaces)
killall Preview
killall "Google Chrome"

# If that doesn't work, find the process ID
pgrep -l Preview

# …and send an unignorable kill signal (discards unsaved work)
kill -9 12345

Use kill -9 last. It gives the app no opportunity to clean up, which occasionally leaves a lock file or a half-written document behind.

Afterwards

Reopen the app before assuming work is lost. Many offer to restore an autosaved version, browsers reopen their tabs, and Office apps keep their own recovery files. If the app crashes again immediately on launch, its preference file may be corrupt — quit it, move the matching .plist out of ~/Library/Preferences, and try once more.

When one app does this constantly

1. Update the app and macOS. An app that hasn't kept up with the current macOS is the most common reason for repeated hangs.
2. Disable its plug-ins and extensions. They run inside the app, so one bad plug-in hangs the whole thing. Add them back one at a time.
3. Check what it's waiting on. Sample the process, as above. Network and cloud waits are the single biggest cause — an app holding a file on a share that's gone away will hang every time.
4. Check the system underneath. Red memory pressure and a full startup disk make every app hang, not just this one.
5. Reinstall it cleanly. Remove the leftover support files first, or the reinstall lands on the same broken state.

If it's not one app but the whole Mac, read the frozen Mac guide; if apps are disappearing rather than hanging, read Mac keeps crashing.

The settings-level fixes above are one-click, reversible toggles in Mainspring — labelled in plain English, with an undo button for every one.

Common questions

What is the keyboard shortcut to force quit on a Mac?

Command-Option-Escape opens the Force Quit Applications window. Holding Command-Option-Shift-Escape for about three seconds force quits the frontmost app immediately, with no confirmation.

Will force quitting lose my work?

It can, but often less than expected. Force quitting skips the app's save step, though apps using Auto Save and Versions — including Pages, Numbers, Keynote, TextEdit and Preview — keep your document current anyway.

How do I force quit if the whole screen is frozen?

Try Command-Option-Escape first, since the Force Quit window is drawn by the system rather than by any app. If nothing at all responds, hold the power button for about ten seconds to force the Mac off.

What is the difference between quit and force quit?

Quit asks the app to close, so it can save and clean up. Force quit terminates it immediately without that opportunity, which is why it should be the second choice rather than the first.

Why does the same app keep freezing on my Mac?

Most often it is out of date for your macOS version, has a misbehaving plug-in, or is waiting on a network or cloud location that is unavailable. Sampling the process in Activity Monitor shows which of those it is.