A method to quit all apps at once

Lexiepex wrote:

Quit all open apps.

I came about a thread where someone wanted to know if all apps must be closed before the mac is shutdown.

My experience is this is not routinely necessary—fact is counter productive. The new OS X "memory compression" manages apps and memory very efficiently and effectively.

"Memory compression is a triple play... It’s a performance win; compressing and decompressing data in RAM is much faster than reading from and writing to disk, even an SSD. It’s an energy win; the less time spent moving data between RAM and disk, the more time the system can spend in its idle state. And finally, it’s a capability win; ... can handle much more demanding workloads than previous versions of OS X"

In shutting down the Mac it is much faster if you let the OS take care of the shut down of all apps and reopen all apps on reboot.

In this way you can pick up where you left off in record time.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan(10.11.5), i7 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhone5 iOS9.3.2, Parallels10.0.2, HP OfficeJet Pro 8620

leroydouglas wrote:

Lexiepex wrote:

Quit all open apps.

I came about a thread where someone wanted to know if all apps must be closed before the mac is shutdown.

My experience is this is not routinely necessary—fact is counter productive. The new OS X manages apps and memory very efficiently and effectively.

In shutting down the Mac it is much faster if you let the OS take care of the shut down of all apps and reopen all apps on reboot.

In this way you can pick up where you left off in record time.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan(10.11.5), i7 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhone5 iOS9.3.2, Parallels10.0.2, HP OfficeJet Pro 8620

I don't want OS X to reopen all apps on reboot, which is why I shut everything down before I shut down the computer. When I start everything back up again the next morning, I'll manually open the apps I want open at that time. So for me, something like this would be interesting to try.

Lexiepex wrote:

Do I have to change the text? because it was not my intention to suggest that this has to be done regularly. I have posted this as a User Tip which I had to do in a bet...

No not at all. My most humble apologies; I did not mean to infer anything counter productive—this was only my personal opinion, and work flow—I never shut down my mac unless necessary.

I had added the word "routinely" to help quantify the statement, not qualify.

Keep up the good work Lexiepex ! Please post a link to your user tip 😉 Found it: A method to quit all apps at once

On we go !

Hey! Got me started on an interesting project. Got me considering two issues.

1. This simple command closes only apps open on the desktop without active connections to Trash, Photoshop and any other 'connected' (multi-thread) process. Some applications in menu bar ignore 'quit all applications' script.
2. Sometimes there is an unusual, inconsistent Dock response, where the entire Dock darkens, then vanishes with Menu Bar! Dock returns, however Menu Bar remains hidden until the Finder icon in the Dock is clicked, when the menu bar also returns to view! In the Apple Communities discussion Using Automator to quit Finder, Steve Gallant mentions Pathfinder (an excellent App Store utility). Pathfinder has 'quit all' functionality that will mimic (also erratically) the Automator's killing of Dock and Menu Bar. However, the Pathfinder expression of this 'bug' coincides with replacement of Finder, so without the finder icon to recover Menu Bar, Pathfinder crashes the OS instance.

The Menu Bar behavior is most troubling. It seems to effect only 'Quit All Applications' runs where at least one app is open with at least one item in the Trash.

Wow! So we got to thinking that this single Automator > Utilities > Run AppleScript > 'Quit All Applications' was removing Finder stability, some process also lacking in Pathfinder. So we stepped up to try and add stabilizing structure to that simple Automator script. Here's what we got, and it seems solid.

Open Automator: select new Application

• Utilities > Quit All Applications
• Utilities > Run AppleScript
  Replace all of
  (* Your script goes here *)with
  tell application “Finder”
  empty the trash
  end tell
• Utilities > Run AppleScript
  Replace all of
  (* Your script goes here *)with
  cat
  osascript –e ‘tell application “Finder” to quit’
• Save as QUIT!

A method to quit all apps at once
Emptying the trash automatically
Using Automator to quit Finder

I posted my solution here.

Automator quit all

I think you will agree, Automator seems to have grouping limitations. What is working is stepping assembly in this order:

1. Built in C+ whatever 'Quit All Applications'.
2. AppleScript, 3 second delay closes and relaunches Finder desktop activity.
3. Shell Script osascript re-runs step 2.
4. Back to AppleScript with a 1 second delay to empty Trash.

So, Any two AppleScript runs together lynches the application. Any ideas why that might be?

Group 1: Utilities > Quit all applications

Quit all applications

Group 2: Utilities > Run AppleScript

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Finder"

activate

quit

delay 3

tell application "Finder"

activate

end tell

end tell

return input

end run

Group 3: Utilities > Run Shell Script

cat

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'

Group 4: Utilities > Run AppleScript

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Finder"

empty the trash

end tell

delay 1

return input

end run