How to Close All Apps on Mac at Once (3 Ways)

macOS has no built-in “quit everything” button. When you want a clean slate — before a presentation, after a heavy work session, or when your Mac starts feeling sluggish — you have three real options. Two are manual and free, one is one click and also free. All three are below.

Method 1: The Cmd-Tab + Cmd-Q loop (built in)

The fastest built-in method uses the app switcher. Hold Cmd and press Tab to open the switcher, keep holding Cmd, move to an app with Tab, and press Q to quit the selected app without leaving the switcher. Repeat until only Finder remains.

1. Hold Cmd, press Tab to bring up the app switcher.
2. Still holding Cmd, press Tab until the app you want to quit is highlighted.
3. Press Q. The app quits and the switcher stays open.
4. Repeat for every app. With practice this takes 2–3 seconds per app.

Apps with unsaved changes will pop a save dialog and interrupt the loop — you deal with each one before you can continue. Ten open apps is typically 30–60 seconds of tabbing and clicking.

Method 2: AppleScript (free, scriptable)

Open Script Editor, paste, and run:

tell application "System Events" to set apps to name of every process whose visible is true and name is not "Finder"
repeat with a in apps
  try
    tell application a to quit
  end try
end repeat

Save it as an application and you have a double-clickable quit-all. The catches: macOS will ask for Automation permissions per app the first time, any app showing a save dialog blocks the script silently, and you maintain it yourself when macOS versions change behavior.

Method 3: One click from the menu bar

Captain Kill Switch sits in the menu bar and does the whole sweep in one click: every app gets a clean quit request (the same as pressing Cmd-Q), and anything still running about two seconds later is closed firmly. Finder, the Dock, and every system process are excluded by an allowlist — it closes applications, never your session. It’s signed, notarised, and free. See the Mac page for setup in under a minute.

The honest trade-off: one click means no save dialogs — unsaved work closes with everything else. Save first, then sweep. If you want per-app save prompts, use Method 1; if you want a clean desktop in two seconds, this is the button.

Which method should you use?

• Quitting 2–3 apps occasionally: Cmd-Tab + Cmd-Q. No install, keeps save dialogs.
• Comfortable with scripts, want it free and DIY: AppleScript.
• Doing this daily — before meetings, streams, or focus blocks: the one-click button. It turns a minute of tabbing into a reflex.