While this problem can practically happen with any App on Mac, it is more commonly reported by users being unable to Force Quit Safari, Word, Excel and the Mail App. To see how, visit Force Quit a Mac App Instantly with a Single Keyboard Shortcut.Ĭomments, improvements, feedback and thanks welcome! Please use the form below.However, many users have reported the problem of being unable to Quit Apps on Mac by right-clicking and also being unable to Force Quit Apps using Command-Option-Escape Shortcut. it’s name shows in the menu bar, there’s a keyboard shortcut that can kill it in one step. If the Mac app you want to force to quit at the front, i.e. Press Esc: Pressing the escape key will cause the Force Quit Applications to close.All being well, your unresponsive Mac app has now been terminated. Notice VLC is no longer in the list of apps that can be quit: Press Return again: This is equivalent to pressing the Force Quit button.Press Return:This will choose the highlighted app to kill.The Force Quit window with VLC now selected Select the app: Use the up and down arrow keys to select (highlight) the frozen app you want to exit.The Force Quit Applications Window on Mac OS X 10.6 A window titled Force Quit Applicationsshould appear, like this: Press the force quit keyboard shortcut Command-Option-Esc: Hold down the Command and Option keys and press the Esc (escape) key.Here’s the process to force quit a frozen app on OSX using only keyboard shortcuts: Keyboard shortcuts can be necessary to force an app to exit, as a hung app may prevent access to the force quit function through the Apple menu. These instructions work for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and – I’ve just tested – I can confirm it works on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion as well.

This is the fastest way to select any Mac app to terminate it immediately. Any application can be quit – not just the front-most app. This article shows how to Force Quit any Mac application using only keyboard shortcuts.

Shortcut to force quit