OS X has a feature called Force Quit to quit both responsive and an unresponsive application on a Mac OS X system. The Force Quit displays list of apps on screen and can be activated using keyboard shortcuts.
Option #1: Press Command-Option-Esc keys to force quit full screen app
To open “Force Quit Applications” on a Mac OS X press Command-Option-Escape:
Select an app (say VLC) and press “Force Quit” button. You may be prompted as follows:
Option #2: If you cannot switch from the unresponsive app…
If you cannot switch from the unresponsive VLC app, press Command-Option-Shift-Esc for three seconds to force it to quit. This key combination tells OS X to force quit the frontmost app.
Option #3: Bash Terminal killall command option
Open the Terminal application and type the following killall command to kill the VLC app:
killall -9 {app-name} killall -9 VLC |
If you do not know the exact name of app, use ps command as follows:
ps aux ps aux | grep -i vlc ps -xu username ps -xu vivek | grep -i vlc |
2 comment
Hi,
What if the mac cant do any? Do i have to hard restart?
I’ve been caught in a couple of situations where I didn’t have my mac open to ssh into, and the full screen app became unresponsive and disallowing me to flip to other desktops even though things were purring along just fine behind the scenes. About the only way I’ve found is shift-option-command-escape. Otherwise, a hard restart, but that’s last resort.