Mac: How to force quit frozen menu bar apps

Whether it’s happening to you right now or you’d like to know what to do in case it happens, read on for how to force quit frozen menu bar apps on a Mac.

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When a standard app freezes up on your Mac, you probably know how to pull up the force quit application window with command + option + escape. But as it happens, that won’t offer the option to do the same for menu bar apps. Here’s what you need to do…

Mac: How to force quit menu bar apps

1. Open Activity Monitor on your Mac (found in Applications > Utilities or use Spotlight)
2. You can manually look for the menu bar app that’s frozen, but using the search option in the top right corner is probably the fastest option
3. Once you’ve selected the frozen app, click the quit button in the top left corner (hexagon with “x”)
4. For frozen menu bar apps, you can pick “Force Quit”
5. Alternatively, before you force quit a menu bar app, you can use the Get Info button (next to the quit button) to see more details about the app, like recent hangs and more
6. You can relaunch the menu bar app by opening the app again

Here’s how these steps look:

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Once you’ve found and selected the frozen menu bar app, click the quit button found in the top left corner.

Now you’ll have the option to force quit the app.

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