How to quit Finder?

Open the Script Editor in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder and run the following:

tell application "Finder" to quit

Alternatively, force quitting it when a shutdown, restart, or logout command has been issued may stop it from relaunching automatically.

(27100)

Yes, that is correct.

(27105)

timmit001 wrote:
So I enter Script Editor through /Applications/AppleScript/ and type in - tell application "Finder" to quit? That simple?

Not quite that simple. AppleScript is a high level (meaning English-like) scripting language useful for controlling applications & Script Editor is an application useful for creating scripts using this language, in much the same way a word processor is useful for creating text documents.

So, if you enter the script text in a Script Editor window & hit return, the result is a new line in the script document, not the execution of the one-line script you just created. To execute a script directly from Script Editor, you click the "Run" button in its toolbar or menu.

However, in this instance, since you now have created an unsaved Script Editor document, the application will ask you if you want to save it before quitting, just like any other well-mannered application would. Moreover, since the script is equivalent to other user requests to quit the Finder normally (IOW, it is not a force quit request), it may do nothing you couldn't do otherwise or cause Script Editor to wait until Finder passes a message back to the script before Script Editor itself will quit.

A simpler way to do what you want (assuming you can access applications) is to launch Terminal (found in Applications/Utilities) & type into its window the text "killall Finder" (without the quotes) & press return. Since Terminal doesn't create documents by default, it will quit without asking if you want to save what you just typed & executed.

However, if the Dock is still available, the simplest method of all is to hold down the option key on the keyboard & click & hold on the Finder's Dock icon. The contextual menu that pops up will now have a new option named "Relaunch" that is the equivalent of the other methods. If Finder won't automatically relaunch during a shutdown request (which is what we are assuming makes any of these methods work), this is your best bet.

timmit001 wrote:
If I try the "option" and click method over Finder, I don't see the choice to "reload". I was wondering about the choice of reloading...if I have asked the system to shut down, wouldn't requesting a program to reload negate the request to shut down, because I have asked it to reopen a program?

The option should be named "Relaunch" & appear as the last item of the contextual menu that pops up by the Finder's Dock icon, just below "Hide Others." You must hold down the option key before clicking & holding on the icon; otherwise the last item is "Hide Others," which is what "Hide" becomes anytime the option key is held down.

As for what it does to the shut down process, I do not know. Most GUI requests to quit the Finder are instead labeled "Relaunch" because a 'watchdog' parent process restarts it as soon as it notices it has quit -- Finder itself can't do this because (duh!) it isn't running. We are presuming with all these methods that the parent process (or its parent) is smart enough not to do this with a pending shutdown request, or has itself already shut down, but that may or may not be a valid assumption.

I suspect from your latest description of the problem that it is not Finder itself that is preventing an orderly shutdown but something else, although I don't know what it might be.

+"I recently encountered the problem of not being able to shut down, restart, or log off of my system. Each time I try, everything on the screen disappears except for the background (or "wallpaper"). After a brief thinking period, a window pops up stating that I need to first quit the Finder program, and that I should force quit if necessary. When I enter the force quit window and select Finder, my only option is to reload."+

I am experiencing the same issue. As stated earlier by a previous poster, the dashboard is still active and by selecting Finder on the dashboard I am able to reopen the desktop. The other suggestions do not help. Any further ideas as to the cause/cure of this issue?
Chuck