Occasionally, you might encounter applications that become not responding or freeze, which can be frustrating as they are often difficult to close using standard methods.
If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry—there are several ways to force close an application in Windows 11. Curious? Here’s a step-by-step guide.
You can press the ALT + F4 keys (or in some cases, ALT + FN + F4).
This keyboard shortcut serves as an alternative to the close button in the Windows control and is the most basic method for handling an unresponsive application.
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For applications that are not responding, you can right-click on the Taskbar and select End task.
The End Task option is not enabled by default, so you’ll need to activate it manually. Follow the steps outlined here: How to Enable the “End Task” Option in Windows 11 Taskbar
Another method is to open Task Manager > Processes, select the unresponsive application, and click End task.
Additionally, you can navigate to Settings > Apps > Installed Apps > select the application you want to force close > right-click Advanced Options > and click Terminate.
This method may not work for all applications, as many do not have the advanced options feature in Settings > Installed Apps.
This approach is considered more advanced, as it involves closing the application via Command Prompt or PowerShell with administrator privileges or by right-clicking and selecting Run as administrator.
The process is straightforward. In Command Prompt, simply enter the following command:
This command lists all currently running applications.
Once you’ve identified the application, type the following command:
For example, the command taskkill /im Taskmgr.exe /t /f forcefully closes the Task Manager.
If you’re using PowerShell, to view running applications, enter the following command:
Then, proceed by entering the following command:
For instance, to forcefully close Task Manager, you would use the command Stop-Process -Name Taskmgr.
These are some of the tricks and steps you can use to force close applications in Windows 11. Give them a try and hope they prove useful. Thank you.
