Guide: How to Close all open macOS Apps (Works!) : Joshua Lowcock

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If you use macOS you may be looking for a shortcut to close all open apps. Effectively force quitting every open macOS app. While macOS offers a Windows equivalent of Task Manager that lets will let you kill applications one by one (the macOS equivalent, to this is ⌘ + Option ⌥ + Escape) it’s slow work and there is a better way.

To close all open macOS Apps at once you need to create your own shortcut using Apple’s Automator and a little bit of AppleScript. Don’t worry, it’s very easy to do and takes all of the 2-3minutes to set up. Once done, you will have your own “KillAll” app that will close all open macOS apps. Here are 10 easy steps of what you need to do give yourself a KillAll command for your Mac.

Press ⌘ +Space to search for and open the Automator application on your Mac.
Select File > New and select the “Application” icon (top row, second from left).
Click Choose.
In the search Variables box, type Quit.
From the left column, drag and drop the Quit All Applications into the right grey Workflow box.
Optionally, make sure you check the “Ask to save changes” check box.
In the Variables search box, type, and select Run AppleScript.
Drag the Run AppleScript to the right, underneath the Quit All Applications module.
In the AppleScript module, highlight “You script goes here” and paste over it the following text.

tell application “Finder” close every window.

It should look like this:

Select File > Save and name the file “killall” make sure you select the “where” location as Applications.
Click Save.

You’re done!

Now you can close all open macOS applications with the command KillAll, just hit ⌘ +Space and type KillAll.

Tip: Keep in mind every other application will close, including apps that you may have run at launch or that run in the background. Apps that have open dialog boxes or that require you to save a file will not be closed or killed. It may take a few seconds to close all open macOS applications, depending on how many windows you have open.

In the version above, unless you check the box at 6, it won’t prompt you to save open files.

If you want a prompt before the application runs, or want to close everything even if there is a Save prompt or customize the icon, this can all be done by making some small tweaks to the steps above by following the Advanced Version instructions below.

Advanced Version of KillAll for macOS

If you want a Prompt before KillAll runs, before Step 4 above,

In the Variables search box, type “Ask for Confirmation”
Drag this from the right-hand side to the left, it should appear before the Quit All Applications command.
In the Message field, type:

Kill All - Are you Sure?

Then continue from Step 4 above.

This is what my personal version of KillAll looks like, it:

prompts for confirmation
ensures I have saved any open/unsaved files
quits all open applications

If you want to Customize the KillAll application icon:

In Finder right-click on “Kill All” and select Info.
In the new window, select the icon in the top right

Then copy and paste the icon that you want to use onto the above icon. If you need an icon, here’s what I use.

If you’re after more posts I have written about the Mac and macOS, you can check out this link. I document various macOS bug fixes, hacks and. tweaks to make macOS better. I also list my favorite free macOS apps.