How to Close All Windows of an App at Once on Mac

Ten Finder windows, six TextEdit documents, a wall of Preview PDFs — you don't have to close them one by one. macOS has had a close-all command forever; it's just hidden behind the Option key. Here's the shortcut, the mouse version, and what it does (and doesn't do) to the app.

The shortcut: Cmd + Option + W

Press Cmd + Option + W and every window of the frontmost app closes at once. It works in Finder, Preview, TextEdit, Notes, Safari — almost anything with a standard File menu.

The trick behind it: holding Option transforms menu commands. Open the File menu, hold Option, and watch Close Window (Cmd + W) change to Close All Windows. That's also the reliable way to check the exact combo in any app — a few apps word it slightly differently, but the Option-modified File menu always shows it.

The mouse version: Option-click the red button

Hold Option and click the red close button on any window, and every window of that app closes with it. Handy when you're already mousing through a pile of Finder windows — one modified click and the desktop is clear. (The same modifier works on the yellow button: Option-click minimizes all of the app's windows instead. Finder itself never quits, so close-all is the closest thing it has to a reset.)

Closing all windows is not quitting

This is the part that trips people up. After Cmd + Option + W, the app is still running — its menu bar stays active and its Dock icon keeps the open indicator. That's normal Mac behavior: apps live independently of their windows.

• Want it gone? Cmd + Q quits the app, windows and all.
• Want it warm? Closing windows but leaving the app running means the next window opens instantly — no relaunch. For heavyweights like Photoshop, that's the faster habit.
• A few utility apps (Calculator, System Settings) quit themselves when their only window closes; document apps never do.

How tabs behave

When a window contains tabs, the plain shortcut shrinks its scope: Cmd + W closes just the active tab. The close-all variant doesn't care — Close All Windows takes every window and every tab in them.

If your finger slips, most apps can bring things back:

• Safari: Cmd + Shift + T reopens recently closed tabs and windows, one step at a time; History → Reopen All Windows from Last Session restores everything.
• Document apps: reopen files from File → Open Recent. Unsaved changes are protected — macOS asks before closing any window with unsaved edits, once per document.

Control what comes back on relaunch

There's a system setting that decides whether closed-then-quit apps resurrect their windows: System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Close windows when quitting an application. With it on (the default), quitting discards the window set and the app launches clean next time. Turn it off and apps restore whatever windows were open when you quit — which makes Cmd + Q behave less like "close everything" and more like "pause everything". If you deliberately close all windows before quitting, the app starts fresh either way, so Cmd + Option + W then Cmd + Q is the reliable "quit clean" combo regardless of the setting.

Sometimes you don't want to close at all

If the goal is just a clean screen, hiding beats closing: Cmd + H stashes the whole app instantly and brings every window back exactly as it was. See minimize vs hide for when each one wins.