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How to quit a menu bar app that has no Quit button

· 6 min read

Click the app’s menu bar icon and look at the bottom of its menu, then try right-clicking the icon, then open its Settings or Preferences window and look for a quit option there. If none of that works, the app is still running as a process, and you can end it from a list of processes: in Foreman it is under Apps or Background processes, and End Task closes it. In Terminal, pkill with the app’s name does the same job.

Menu bar apps are designed to stay out of the way, and some designers leave the Quit command in an odd place. Here is the order to try.

Step 1: Look in the app’s own menu

Click the icon in the menu bar. Many apps put Quit at the very bottom of the menu that opens. Others put it behind a gear or three-dot button inside the panel. Look for any of these:

  • A gear, cog or three-dot icon at a corner of the panel, which opens a menu with Quit.
  • A line at the bottom that says Quit, Quit [app name] or Exit.
  • A menu that only appears when you hold the Option key while clicking, in the few apps that hide extra commands there.

Some apps open a panel with no menu at all and show the Quit command only on the right-click. Try both a left click and a right click (or a Control-click) on the icon before you give up.

Step 2: Check the app’s settings

Menu bar apps usually have a Settings or Preferences window, reached from a Settings item in their menu or panel. Look through it for a switch such as “Show in menu bar” or “Hide menu bar icon”. Be careful with those: turning off the icon may hide the app without stopping it, so the app keeps running and you lose the only handle you had to it. Quit it first if you can, then change the setting.

Some apps also have a setting to open at login. If the real goal is that the app does not start every time you turn the Mac on, turn that off here, or in System Settings under General > Login Items & Extensions (Login Items on macOS 14). How to stop apps opening at login on a Mac covers that in full.

Step 3: Bring the app to the front and press Command-Q

Some menu bar apps also have a window. If you can open it from the icon, it may then become the front app, and its name appears in the menu bar at the left, next to the Apple menu. When it does, the app menu next to the Apple menu has a Quit item, and Command-Q works as it does for any app.

This is the standard route for apps that show as a normal app when their window is open. If the menu bar at the left still shows another app’s name after you click the icon, the app does not take focus and this step will not help.

Step 4: Try the Force Quit window

Press Option-Command-Escape to open the Force Quit Applications window. It lists the apps macOS thinks of as regular apps. A menu bar app may or may not be on that list, depending on how it was built. Many menu bar utilities are not listed at all, which is exactly why this window leaves people stuck.

If the app is in the list, select it and click Force Quit. If it is not, go on to step 5. How to force quit an app on a Mac: every way that works has the other routes.

Step 5: End it from a process list

Every app that is running is a process, whether or not it has a Dock icon, and a process list shows all of them.

With Foreman:

  1. Press Control-Shift-Escape to open it from any app.
  2. On the Processes page, look under Apps first, then under Background processes. Foreman shows menu bar apps in one of those two places. Use the search field, “Search by name or PID”, and type the app’s name.
  3. Select the row and click End Task. Foreman asks the app to quit the normal way, as Command-Q would, so it can save anything it needs to. If it does not go, press End Task again within a minute to force quit it.

An app’s helper processes sit under its row, added up, and the row opens to show them, so you can check that nothing of the app is left running afterwards. Right-click the app for the other choices, including Force Quit and Restart.

With Terminal, if you know the app’s name:

  1. Open Terminal and type pgrep -il followed by part of the name, to see the matching processes and their IDs.
  2. Run pkill -x followed by the app’s exact name, which sends the polite stop signal. If it ignores that, kill -9 with the process ID forces it.

How to kill a process from Terminal on a Mac, and when not to explains what those commands do and what you risk.

Why it comes back

Quitting a menu bar app is the easy part. Keeping it quit is where people get stuck, because many of them start again at login, or restart themselves after you end them, or have a helper that relaunches them.

There are three things to check:

  • The login item. In System Settings, go to General > Login Items, select the app in the Open at Login list and click the minus button. Foreman’s Startup Apps page shows the same items, grouped by the app they belong to, with Disable for each one. Items an app registered through macOS’s login items interface can only be switched in System Settings, and Foreman opens it there for you.
  • The background item. Some apps run a helper that is separate from the icon. The Allow in the Background switches in the same System Settings pane control those.
  • The app itself. Some apps are built to start again if they stop. Check their settings for an option that says to keep running. Why an app keeps reopening after you quit it on a Mac goes through the whole list.

If you want the app gone altogether, delete it the normal way. Foreman does not uninstall apps. It does remove leftover startup items from apps you have already deleted, which are marked “Program missing” in Startup Apps.

Which menu bar items you cannot quit this way

Not every icon in the menu bar is an app. The clock, Wi-Fi, sound, battery and Control Center items belong to macOS. Foreman describes ControlCenter as drawing the clock, Wi-Fi, sound and battery items, and SystemUIServer as drawing some of the other status items. You do not quit these. Many of them can be hidden in System Settings, under Control Center, and ending the process only makes macOS start it again.

The short version

  1. Click the icon, right-click the icon, then check the app’s settings for Quit.
  2. If the app takes focus, press Command-Q.
  3. Try the Force Quit window with Option-Command-Escape. Menu bar apps often are not in it.
  4. Otherwise, end it from a process list: End Task in Foreman, or pkill in Terminal.
  5. To keep it from coming back, turn off its login item in System Settings.

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