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Force quit stuck applications from the dock System
Today Safari locked up on me and I noticed something new, at least to me. Instead of bringing up the Force Quit window via the Apple Menu or usual key combinations I went to the Safari icon in the dock to see if I could still quit the application from there. Instead of the usual choice of Quit it listed Force Quit instead. Much quicker way to Force Quit than usual methods. I will have to wait until some other application hangs to see if this is specific to Safari.

By the way, when doing a search to see if this had been posted here I found one related submission, but that stated that the control key needed to be pressed before seeing the choice of Force Quit in the dock. For me the choice was just there without pressing any extra keys.

[robg adds: I believe this behavior has been in OS X since the beginning, though I'm not positive. Basically, if an application is no longer functioning, and the system knows it's not functioning (not always the case), then the dock's contextual menu will show Force Quit instead of Quit. You'll also see such applications listed in red if you hit Command-Option-Escape.]
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Force quit stuck applications from the dock | 6 comments | Create New Account
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Force quit stuck applications from the dock
Authored by: MasterUltan on Jun 09, '03 10:32:59AM

Holding down "option" while right-clicking or control-clicking on the dock icon changes "Quit" to "Force Quit"



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Force quit stuck applications from the dock
Authored by: acroyear on Jun 09, '03 02:12:46PM

Okay, but what do you do when that doesn't work? And then sudo kill -9 [the process #] doesn't work?

I had this instance last week where Word locked up. I had the spinning beachball for that process going for about 45 minutes before I decided it HAD to go; the top list showed a stuck process. None of the usual procedures worked. I figured I didn't have anything to lose, and I couldn't log out. I ended up trying to kill the windowing system (ATServer? don't remember now which one I picked). The screen went blue, then made me log in again, but the process was still there, even though Word wasn't showing up in the dock as having been launched, and the console was saying something about Invalid other window. I ended up rebooting.

I'm curious to know what would cause such a super-stuck process and what else I might've done in a circumstance where I really needed not to reboot....

--Acroyear



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Force quit stuck applications from the dock
Authored by: PCguy on Jun 09, '03 05:34:45PM

I've found that repeatedly running that command will eventually take care of the problem. I also switch to root for the worst offenders. Most of the time, sudo kill -9 will work after a few tries, occasionally root is required to do the job.



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Force quit stuck applications from the dock
Authored by: lsochrin on Jun 09, '03 04:40:03PM

I've frequently had the same problem as the previous comment, namely that I can do force quit many times, over and over again, but nothing quits, no matter which approach I use, and I eventually have to do a power off and restart. I have had this happen mainly in Preview and in Excel. I read a tip to go to ~library(my user library)/preferences/com.apple.preview.plist and to trash that, and this seems to have worked for now for preview. I am a little less eager to trash the plist file for Excel, since I don't want to lose all of my previous special settings.



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Force quit stuck applications from the dock
Authored by: nburatovich on Jun 09, '03 06:18:03PM
I've noticed similar behavior (using "Force Quit" from a Dock menu doesn't work all the time). Using bringing up the force quit floating (Command - Option - Escape) and quitting from the offending process from there usually quits the app on the first try. In rare circumstances I have to open the terminal and use kill [pid].

Lately, I have been using Escape Pod and it seems to be the quickest, most surefire way to quit the frontmost app every time. If the "frozen" application is not the front most, I select it by Command-Tabbing through the dock and then invoke Escape Pod. Give it a try if you are having further problems.

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Force quit stuck applications from the dock
Authored by: kholburn on Jun 09, '03 07:45:49PM

This has been there from very early in MacOS X.

One thing I find really useful is that if I accidentally start an application I didn't want, especially one that takes a long time to start up , as soon as the dock icon appears I can force quit it.

I always wanted to be able to do that in the old MacOS.



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