How to Force-Quit a Program (Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, XP)

This article explains several ways you can force programs to close in Windows. These directions are helpful when closing the normal way, such as by selecting the big X, doesn't do the trick. The steps apply to Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP.

Close the Program Using ALT + F4

The little-known but very handy ALT + F4 keyboard shortcut performs the same, behind-the-scenes, program-closing magic that clicking or tapping that X in the top-right of a program window does. Here's how to do it:

1. Bring the program you want to quit to the foreground by tapping or clicking it. If you're having trouble, move through all your open windows with Alt+Tab.

   This step is super important. If a different program or app is selected, that's the program or app that's in focus and will close. If no program is selected, Windows itself will shut down, although you'll have a chance to cancel it before it happens (so don't skip trying this trick for fear of shutting off your computer).

2. Press and hold one of the ALT keys.

3. While still holding the ALT key down, press F4 once.

   Tap the F4 key just once. If you hold it down, then as each program closes, the next one that comes to focus will close down, too. This will keep happening until all your programs are shut down and, ultimately, you'll be prompted to turn off the PC. So, only tap the ALT key once to exit the one app or program that won't close.

4. Let go of both keys.

Because ALT + F4 is identical to using the X to close an open program, this method of force-quitting a program is only helpful if the program in question is working to some degree, and it won't work to close any other processes that this program "spawned" at any point since it started.

That said, knowing this force-quit method can be particularly helpful if the batteries in your wireless mouse have quit, your touchscreen or touchpad drivers are making your life really difficult right now, or some other mouse-like navigation isn't working as it should.

Still, ALT + F4 takes just a second to try and is much easier to pull off than the more complicated ideas below, so we highly recommend you try it first, no matter what you think the source of the problem might be.

Use Task Manager to Force the Program to Quit

Assuming ALT + F4 didn't do the trick, truly forcing an unresponsive program to quit—no matter what state the program is in—is best accomplished via Task Manager.

1. Open Task Manager using the CTRL + SHIFT + ESC keyboard shortcut.

   If that doesn't work or you don't have access to your keyboard, right-click or tap-and-hold on the Desktop taskbar and choose Task Manager or Start Task Manager (depending on your version of Windows) from the pop-up menu that appears.

2. Find the program or app that you want to close and get Task Manager to direct you to the actual process that supports it. This sounds a bit hard, but it's not. The exact details do differ depending on your version of Windows, though.

   Windows 10 & 8: Find the program you want to force close in the Processes tab, listed in the Name column and probably under the Apps heading. Once found, right-click or tap-and-hold it and choose Go to details.

   If you don't see the Processes tab, Task Manager might not be opened in full view. Choose More details at the bottom of the Task Manager window.

   Windows 7, Vista, & XP: Find the program you're after in the Applications tab. Right-click it and then click Go To Process.

   You may be tempted to simply End task directly from that pop-up menu, but don't. While this might be perfectly fine for some programs, doing this "the long way" as we're describing here is a much more effective way to force quit a program (more on this below).

3. Right-click or tap-and-hold the highlighted item you see and choose End process tree.

   You should be in the Details tab if you're using Windows 10 or Windows 8, or the Processes tab if you're using an older version of Windows.

4. Click or tap End process tree in the warning that appears. In Windows 10, for example, this warning looks like this:

   Do you want to end the process tree of [program file name]? If open programs or processes are associated with this process tree, they will close and you will lose any unsaved data. If you end a system process, it might result in system instability. Are you sure you want to continue? 
   

   This is a good thing — it means that not only will this individual program you want to be closed actually close, it means Windows will also end any processes that that program started, which are probably also hung up but much harder to track down yourself.

5. Close Task Manager.

That's it! The program should have closed immediately but it could take several seconds if there were lots of child processes connected to the frozen program or the program was using a lot of system memory.

See? Easy as pie... unless it didn't work or you can't get Task Manager to open. Here are a few more ideas if Task Manager didn't force the program to close:

Confuse the Program!

That's probably not advice you've seen elsewhere, so let's explain.

In some cases, you can actually give a problematic program a little nudge off the cliff, so to speak, pushing it into a full-blown frozen state, and sending a message to Windows that it should probably be terminated.

To do this, do as many "things" as you can think to do in the program, even if they don't do anything because the program is crashing. For example, click on menu items over and over, drag items around, open and close fields, try exiting half a dozen times—whatever you want, so long as you do them in the program you're hoping to force quit.

Assuming this works, you'll get a window with a [program name] is not responding heading, usually with options like Check for a solution and restart the program, Close the program, Wait for the program to respond, or End Now (in older versions of Windows).

Tap or click Close the program or End Now to do just that.

Execute the TASKKILL Command to... Kill the Task!

We have one last trick to force quit a program, but it's an advanced one. A particular command in Windows, called taskkill, does just that—it kills the task you specify, completely from the command line.

This trick is great in one of those hopefully rare situations where some kind of malware has prevented your computer from working normally, you still have access to Command Prompt, and you know the filename of the program you want to "kill."

Here's how to do it:

1. Open Command Prompt. A common method to open Command Prompt in all versions of Windows, even in Safe Mode, is via Run: open it with the WIN + R keyboard shortcut and then enter cmd.

2. Execute the taskkill command like this:

   taskkill /im filename.exe /t /f
   

   ...replacing filename.exe with whatever filename the program you want to close is using. The /t option makes sure any child processes are closed as well, and the /f option forcefully terminates the process.

   If in the very rare situation you don't know the filename, but do know the PID (process ID), you can execute taskkill like this instead:

   taskkill /pid processid /t /f
   

   ...replacing, of course, processid with the actual PID of the program you want to force quit. A running program's PID is most easily found in Task Manager.

3. The program or app that you force-quit via taskkill should end immediately and you should see one of these responses in Command Prompt: ​

   SUCCESS: Sent termination signal to process with PID [pid number], child of PID [pid number]. 
   
   SUCCESS: The process with PID [pid number] child of PID [pid number] has been terminated. 
   

   If you get an ERROR response that says that a process was not found, check that the filename or PID you used with the taskkill command was entered correctly.

Restart Your PC to Quit Every Program

If even taskkill doesn't work, you're left with having to restart your computer, a force-quit for even the most stubborn of programs. Unfortunately, this also shuts down Windows, so all your apps will close in the process.

How to Force-Quit Running Programs on Non-Windows Machines

Software programs and apps sometimes stop responding and won't close on Apple, Linux, and other operating systems and devices, too. It's certainly not a problem exclusive to Windows machines.

On a Mac, force quitting is best done from the Dock or via the Force Quit option from the Apple menu. You can also press Command + Option + Escape to bring up a Force Quit Applications window.

In Linux, the xkill command is one really easy way to force quit a program. Open a terminal window, type it, and then click the open program to kill it.

In ChromeOS, open Task Manager using SHIFT + ESC and then select the program you want to terminate, followed by the End process button.

How you force quit an app on iPad and iPhone devices depends on your device. Either swipe up the screen to see your open apps or double-press the Home button, then find the app you want to close and swipe it up as if you're tossing it right off the device.

Android devices have a similar process: swipe up from the bottom of the screen or tap the square multitasking button, and then swipe the unresponding app up even further, off the screen. Or, for some Android devices, you need to swipe left or right.