Menu Bar icon methodĪlthough we showed you how to quit apps from the Dock and Menu Bar menu, some apps don’t appear in the Dock at all but instead show up as icons in the Menu Bar.

The keyboard shortcut method is a quick and effective way to quit apps, especially when your mouse or trackpad may not be responding. With the app you want to quit running in the foreground, press Command + Q on the keyboard to quit the app. Yet another way to quit apps on your Mac is with a humble keyboard shortcut. Following this gesture, the black dot underneath the app should disappear, indicating the app has been terminated. From this pop-up menu, select the Quit option, and the app will quit. When an app is running, you can simply right-click on an app from Mac’s application Dock, and a pop-up menu appears. Possibly the second most popular way to quit an app on a Mac due to the ease of accessibility is from the Dock. In this case, because we’re quitting the Mail app, we’ll go to Mail > Quit Mail from the Menu Bar on our Mac. Then, choose the Quit option from the drop-down menu. To quit an app from the Menu Bar, make sure the app you want to quit is running in the foreground, and click on the app’s name from the Menu Bar. I would expect most people to find this to be one of the easiest ways to quit an app because it’s always easy to get to.

Perhaps the most widely-used method of quitting an app is by using the Menu Bar menu. There are multiple ways to quit apps on your Mac, and today we’ll be showing you six ways this can be done. You know an app is running when the icon is showing in the Dock, and a black dot appears underneath the app icon, like this:Īlternatively, you might see the app showing in the Menu Bar instead of its app icon showing in the Dock. This helps clean up your Dock and Desktop of unnecessary clutter and makes it easier to find what you’re looking for when you go to launch an app in the future. Terminal method Quitting apps on your MacĪlthough you could technically leave all your apps open in the background due to the macOS power efficiency abilities, quitting your unused apps is a good idea if you’re not going to need to use them again for a while.

Mac shortcut to force quit