How to ‘kill’ any Mac app from the Terminal

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Mac apps rarely crash. But sometimes they do. When this happens, they may not allow an end user to use the normal key combination (Command-Q) to exit the app.

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Since MacOS sits on top of Unix, there is a terminal command that’ll allow anyone to get an app to quit.  But doing so may mean whatever the user was doing before the crash may loose any unsaved data.

The below should only be done as a last resort.

1.  Open Terminal (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal).
2.  At the Terminal prompt, type in ‘killall nameofapp’
3.  Press [Enter].
4.  That’s it.

Now the app quickly exits.

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Dan Uff

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