Mac OS X: Force Quit An Unresponsive Full Screen Application Shortcut Key

Sometime my VLC application gets crashed on a Mac OS X system. The screen goes blank and VLC stays hang running on my desktop or MacBook. How can I solve this issue and quit an unresponsive VLC application on a Mac OS X without a hard reboot?

OS X has a feature called Force Quit to quit both responsive and an unresponsive application on a Mac OS X system. The Force Quit displays list of apps on screen and can be activated using keyboard shortcuts.

Option #1: Press Command-Option-Esc keys to force quit full screen app

To open "Force Quit Applications" on a Mac OS X press Command-Option-Escape:

Fig.01: Force Quit App

Select an app (say VLC) and press "Force Quit" button. You may be prompted as follows:

Fig.02: Confirmation dialog box

Option #2: If you cannot switch from the unresponsive app...

If you cannot switch from the unresponsive VLC app, press Command-Option-Shift-Esc for three seconds to force it to quit. This key combination tells OS X to force quit the frontmost app.

Option #3: Bash Terminal killall command option

Open the Terminal application and type the following killall command to kill the VLC app:

 
killall -9 {app-name}
killall -9 VLC
 

If you do not know the exact name of app, use ps command as follows:

 
ps aux
ps aux | grep -i vlc
ps -xu username
ps -xu vivek | grep -i vlc
 

References

• OS X keyboard shortcuts