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Level 1

27 points

force quit fails to kill apps and prevents shutdown

I have an irritating transient error on a new Macbook Pro (OSX 10.15.2). Apps will occasionally start up with a blank window and no content, then cannot be killed with force quit.

Yesterday it was Tweetdeck, today it was App Store (but Tweetdeck is working okay). There seems to be no consistent pattern or way to replicate this.

This is a brand new mac with a recently clean install of OSX 10.15.2, with my data restored from a time machine backup from a previous mac. All apps are up to date and the App Store issue this morning showed it's even the Apple Native macs.

I can't restart or shut down when this happens as I get the "shut down was stopped by XYX - use Force Quit to kill it". When I do force quit, it won't die. No process is shown in the activity monitor, so I'm forced to shutdown by holding down the power button until the mac switches off and reboots.

Any ideas on what's wrong (or is this an OSX wait for a new update thing?). Seems like it's a fault with the OS somewhere starting up an app incorrectly and then not having something to shut down.

Difficult to test, as I can't replicate which app it happens with, or when it's going to occur.

Any ideas on how to kill something that won't be killed by force quit and isn't listed in the Activity Monitor as an active process gratefully received!

MacBook Pro 16", macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 6, 2020 12:47 PM

Best reply

Ferd II

Level 10

104,335 points

Posted on Jan 6, 2020 1:32 PM

Try these two suggestions:

If there is no improvement after the Safe Mode Start/Restart sequence download and install the Combo Update.

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Best reply

Ferd II

Level 10

104,335 points

Jan 6, 2020 1:32 PM in response to JP24

Try these two suggestions:

If there is no improvement after the Safe Mode Start/Restart sequence download and install the Combo Update.

Jan 13, 2020 12:44 PM in response to JP24

Here's a solution that appears effective: Stop all work. Force Shutdown. Restart. Start working again.

I had the same problem as JP24, but with Notes.app. MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014), running Catalina 10.15.2.

Here's the sequence that may have triggered the problem:

Copy / Paste from Preview/PDF into Chrome failed to transfer text. Instead, paste resulted a string of boxes, as if characters had been converted to a special character. Character spacing in search bar had the same as text spacing in string I copied.

Tried a Copy/Paste into TextEdit.app. Result was a multi-page document with no visible content.

I've been logging difficulties with my MAC, iPhone and Watch since 2019-12-04, the date I "upgraded" to Catalina 10.15.1. I use Notes.app for this log. Notes.app was open at the time, but I could not bring up a window. I tried to quit from the menu bar, but "Quit" was not an option, but Force Quit was. Tried to force-quit Notes.app several times, without success. I gave up and tried to do a restart from the Apple menu.

Restart hung up because Notes.app would not shut down. I started Activity Monitor.app to look for changes to %CPU during a Force Quit, but did not see any change.

Forced a shut down by holding down the On-button. Then restarted. Everything appeared OK after that.

Sometimes a failure report screen comes up, even after forcing a hard shutdown. This time, it did not, so I couldn't report the problem to Apple.

Catalina 10.15 continues to disappoint. It makes me remember Microsoft's Blue Screen Of Death: Shut down. Restart. Repeat.

force quit fails to kill apps and prevents shutdown