How to Quit an App on your Windows 11 PC? – Have you ever found yourself in that frustrating situation where an application you are using in Windows has stopped responding entirely? Perhaps you were at school, or at work, and suddenly, the program just froze; you couldn’t click on anything, and you couldn’t even close the app by pressing the X button in the corner. In these situations, the best thing to do is to simply quite the app and restart it – this will normally fix whatever issue might have been happening. But why exactly do these things happen?
Why Might You Need to Quite an App?
We spoke to a tech company based in London, that has over a decade of experience working with Windows. TechQuarters provided IT support services London based organisations have been relying on for years now, and they were able to describe some of the reasons why it might be necessary to force quite an application.
The simple truth is that computers are complex machines that relies on internal communication. A computer works by sending messages back and forth between different programs – millions of messages are sent every second just to fulfil the normal functions of your operating system (Windows). Sometimes one of the many programs that make up an application can malfunction, and not communicate with the whole properly, and that leads to the app not functioning as it should.
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How to Quite an App on Windows 11?
When an application malfunctions and stops responding to the rest of the machine, the best thing to do is to forcefully quite it, and attempt to restart the program. Sometimes, if an application has been running for a long period of time, the chances of errors occurring increases. Restarting it is like cleaning the slate.
If you need to force quit and restart an app in your Windows PC, here are the top ways to do it:
1. Task Manager
The Task Manager is a handy tool that you can use to monitor all the active programs on your system. In Task Manager, apps and processes are known as ‘tasks’, and if you need to, you can end a task, which is simply a way of killing the process. Here’s how to access it:
- Press Ctrl, Shift & Esc on your keyboard. This will launch Task Manager.
- Select the program you need to force quite, for example Microsoft Word.
- Go to the bottom of the Task Manager window, and click End Task.
This will shut down that app almost instantly, after which you can restart it.
2. Keyboard Shortcut
When you learn the keyboard shortcuts in Windows, using your computer becomes much quicker and more efficient. Force quitting an app with the keyboard shortcut is the most efficient method, so long as you can remember the shortcut! Simply press Alt + F4 on your keyboard whilst you are in the app that is being unresponsive, and it will be forced to quit.
3. Desktop Shortcut
If you frequently get apps that freeze and become unresponsive, create a desktop shortcut that closes all unresponsive apps at the same time can be quite handy. Here’s how to do it:
- Right-click on your desktop (in an empty space). Click New and then Shortcut.
- In the create shortcut window, go to the location field, and type out this command:
Taskkill /f /fi “status eq not responding”
- Click Next.
- Name the shortcut, and select Finish.
The next time an app becomes unresponsive, all you have to do is double-click that shortcut, and it will force quit that app.
4. Command Prompt
This is probably the most fiddly method of force quitting an application, but it is worth knowing. If all other methods fail, you can always try this one.
- Press Windows Key + R. The Run dialog will appear.
- In the Run search bar, type exe and then press enter.
- The Command Prompt window should appear.
- In the Command Prompt, type tasklist and press enter. A list of all active programs will appear.
- Locate the program you need to terminate and remember the name of the program.
- Type taskkill/im [name of the program].exe. For instance to force quite Firefox, you would type “taskkill/im firefox.exe”.
- Press enter, and the program should be forced to quit, and you will see a message saying that program was successfully terminated.