The Fastest Way to Kill Unresponsive Apps in Windows 11
From time to time on PC I have no choice but to simply close an application that is not responding. Usually closing the app helps, but sometimes a frozen app won’t respond when you press the close button. In such cases, I usually force close the application by launching the task manager. There are several ways to do this, but it still takes some time to open the task manager, find the offending processes and then close them. It turns out there is a much faster way to close unresponsive apps in Windows 11.
The fastest way to force close applications in Windows 11
I found this tip on Reddit , and it’s as simple as enabling one checkbox in the settings. First, open the Start menu in Windows 11 and click the gear icon in the bottom right corner. This will open Windows 11 Settings. Now go to System > Developer Options – this is the ninth option under System Settings. On the For Developers page, enable End task .
Once this is done, you can right-click any app icon on the taskbar and select End Task to force close it. That’s it! As a reminder, you should not use this option unless you are forced to do so. If the app is responsive, using a regular close button (the X in the top right corner or the exit function built into your app) should work fine and is less likely to cause problems. Force exit should be used as a last resort if you don’t want to worry about losing data.
Other ways to close unresponsive apps in Windows 11
There are several alternative ways to open the task manager and force close applications in Windows 11. The easiest way is to press Ctrl-Shift-Esc on your keyboard to open the task manager directly. Go to the Processes tab, select the frozen application and click End Task to force close it. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl-Alt-Del , select Task Manager and follow the same steps. You can even open the Start menu and use the search bar to search for Task Manager.