sure fire force quit?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Sometimes force quit doesnt kill an application. When an app wont quit a force shutdown of comp is only way out.

I know the menu and the dock ones

What else is there and is there one that will force quit regardless how stubborn the app is?



Usually occationally the system pref that hang for me

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aussie John

    Sometimes force quit doesnt kill an application. When an app wont quit a force shutdown of comp is only way out.

    I know the menu and the dock ones

    What else is there and is there one that will force quit regardless how stubborn the app is?



    Usually occationally the system pref that hang for me




    Well you could use the terminal - are you comfortable with that? you can get the process id and then sudo kill -9 id#. however, depending on the process you kill, it might potentially be relaunched immediately after you kill it (if there is something watching for it to go down).
  • Reply 2 of 9
    yes am reasonably comfortable using the terminal, but how do you determine the process number to kill.

    And how do you keep it down if it keeps relaunching.

    I would be happy to boot into the login screen.
  • Reply 3 of 9
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    first, to find the process id:

    ps aux | grep -i "name of program"

    replace "name of program" with whatever name that shows up as you hover over the errant process in the dock. that should return something like 2 lines of text. the line which does not contain the word 'grep' is what we're looking for. if there are many lines, look through them for one that ends with a name most similar to the program ur trying to kill. the second item on that line (the first number), is the process id.



    also, `kill -9 pid` doesn't always work. there about 31 different type of kills you can send a process to take ut down. i made myself a little script called superkill for stubborn programs. it iterates from `kill -1 pid` up to `kill -31 pid`; so when i find a stubborn process, superkill can usually cut it down. if that doesn't kill the stubborn program, it may be beyond my help. also, if you do get it down successfully, and it pops backup, you got to do some sleuthing to hold it down. i don't know of any easy way to find a watcher program that autolaunches processes. mine usually stay dead the first time so i haven't investigated many methods beyond superkill?.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    You can logout/login. That works best for me.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    type "top" into the terminal

    get the process ID

    press q

    type "kill <<whatever the process ID is>>

    much simpler and straightforward for those of us not comfortable with the terminal
  • Reply 6 of 9
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    You can logout/login. That works best for me.



    trouble is with a locked process you cant log out or quit
  • Reply 7 of 9
    aquafireaquafire Posts: 2,758member
    Try pressing the keys "Command-Option -Esc"

    "Command" is left of the bar and has an apple sysmbol in it.

    Press them all at the same time.

    This is Macs recommended force quite routine
  • Reply 8 of 9
    Quote:

    Originally posted by aquafire

    Try pressing the keys "Command-Option -Esc"







    Yes true but I am talking about stubborn app that wont quit
  • Reply 9 of 9
    paulpaul Posts: 5,278member
    just get escape pod from moki (ambrosia)
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