How can I quit the application opened from terminal in Mac OS X?

Question

I know we can start an application from command line like:

 open -a "/Applications/Google Chrome.app"/

How can I quit that application from command line?

shadowtalker · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-04 20:20:45Z

7

osascript -e 'quit app "/Applications/Google Chrome.app"'

Or, as per the comments,

osascript -e 'tell app "/Applications/Google Chrome.app" to quit'

answered Mar 4, 2015 at 19:51

shadowtalker

3862 silver badges11 bronze badges

Or tell app "Google Chrome" to quit.
– slhck
Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 19:52
@slhck what is the difference between quit app App and tell app App to quit?
– shadowtalker
Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 20:21
None that I know of. Personal preference :)
– slhck
Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 20:26

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tbodt · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-05 00:43:44Z

-1

Since you know the name of the process, you can use killall:

$ killall "Google Chrome"

answered Mar 5, 2015 at 0:43

tbodt

1111 silver badge10 bronze badges

But you don't know the name of the process in the general case. open -a takes an .app path, and killall takes a UNIX executable name, in this case situated in the MacOSX subfolder. The name of the UNIX executable is defined in Info.plist and is not guaranteed to match the name of the .app. The easiest way to prove this is by renaming an application and trying to kill it using killall and the new name. There may also be oddball applications where the developer just chose a different name for the two things.
– nitro2k01
Commented Mar 5, 2015 at 9:57

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2 Answers 2