Wanted: Shortcut to close apps

Hi! I hope you can help me with this admittedly trivial problem

So I don't have to click the “X” every time, I'm looking for a shortcut to simply close an application. On macOS, that would be Cmd+Q.

• Alt+F4 isn't an option for me because I work on a laptop and constantly use the F keys to adjust volume and brightness
• In some programs, Ctrl+Q works and in others Ctrl+Shift+Q or even Esc works—but in many, neither of them works.

I’ve worked exclusively on Macs for the last 6 years, but before that I used Windows for years—and I don’t remember this ever being a problem "back then". Wasn't it always Ctrl+Q in every app??? I'm confused.

Alternatively, could I set up a shortcut in Windows myself—without causing any new problems? What would be the best way to do that?

Thank you very much in advance!

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

If you like, you can check the options in the tutorial below to see if one may work better for closing a window/app.

Thank you very much!
But I'm really looking for a simple shortcut...

Alt + F4 is the simple shortcut, on laptops with a fn key it becomes fn + alt + F4. If you wanted to remap that you can install Power Toys and use the Keyboard Manager feature to remap that shortcut

If there was one for single window Brink would know.

You can close all windows using a tiny 3rd party app called "closeall " though. It's my understanding it is now a paid app since it's developer sold it to NtWind.
I've used a really old version 1.30 of Closeall for many years; from back when it was free. If you're interested in that, after much searching I found it here. Scroll to bottom of page to see download. Unzip it and copy the tiny closeall.exe where ever you want (I copy mine to the root of C) and pin it's icon to your taskbar.

Assuming you simply wish to close the currently focussed Window (is that correct?) then you could use a 1 line Autohotkey script and assign whatever shortcut key you like to it.

You can create the script as a <name>.ahk file (text) and run that with Autohotkey, and rt click it, click Compile to create a <name>.exe file.

Note the text at the bottom (it's similar to using ALT F4)

neemobeer said:

fn + alt + F4

Click to expand...

OK! That actually seems just about doable...
to be honest, the fm button was new to me—thanks so much for the tip!

Thank you for your reply.

dalchina said:

Assuming you simply wish to close the currently focussed Window (is that correct?)

Click to expand...

Yes, that's correct... close the window and close the app.

Dalchina, I'm sure that using AutoHotkey is probably the smartest way to do it—but unfortunately, I really don't know anything about it, and it doesn't seem all that intuitive to me either (I downloaded Autohotkey and tried it for about 20min but...)

Still, thank you so much!

Create New shortcut with taskkill command
You can add multiple commands to .bat file
But if the app runs as admin, you need to create it as an elevated shortcut.

Sorry, double-post.
See @Brink's tutorial in post #2, Option Three:

TairikuOkami said:

Create New shortcut with taskkill command

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for the tip! For the moment, alt+f4 or fn+alt+f4 is working just fine for me...

To close an app or close a whole group of apps if grouping is enabled on the taskbar (see the "Disable grouping on the taskbar" mod below) via middle-click and still be able to open a new instance via Shift + middle-click:
As stated in the mod description, you can assign a modifier key (Ctrl or Alt or both) to be able to force-terminate (kill) an app, or apps. Similar to running the taskkill command with the /f option, force‑terminating a Windows GUI process is never clean. This isn't just about losing your unsaved work. It's also about a list of other potential risks:

• Unreleased kernel handles
• Zombie processes
• Zombie threads
• Corrupted COM apartments
• Broken shared memory segments
• GPU context leaks
• File corruption
• Registry corruption
• Broken IPC channels
• Stuck mutexes and locks
• Shell integration breakage
• DWM composition leaks
• Unreleased audio/video devices
• Unreleased network sockets

So, you need to be careful with this. When in doubt, refrain from force-terminating your app excepting only after the app "hangs" (but also remember that an app that is no longer responding may become responsive again if you give it patience).

That being said, with this mod you can also middle-click on any thumbmail in the task switcher view. (It's the view that appears while holding down Alt + Tab or after pressing Ctrl + Alt + Tab.) On keyboard layouts that have an Alt Gr key, pressing Alt Gr + Tab is equivalent to pressing Ctrl + Alt + Tab. If you use this keyboard shortcut instead of normal Alt + Tab you will notice that the task switcher view stays open so you can use keyboard to navigate between the thumbnails. Enter or Spacebar activates the selected window, Del closes it. Esc closes the task switcher view. This is all standard task switcher view behavior in Windows.

As a bonus, you can customize the task switcher by using ExplorerPatcher's "Simple Window Switcher" optional feature. I use it, it allows me to see more thumbnails by adjusting the layout size/dimensions as well as by using its two extra keyboard shortcuts Alt + key above Tab and Alt Gr + key above Tab. These extra shortcuts filter out thumbnails that don't belong to the same group as the active window so they can definitely help to speed up your workflow further when you're dealing with a lot of open apps.

To disable grouping on the taskbar or set up your own custom groups:

To tame the labels on the Windows 11 taskbar:

glasskuter said:

You can close all windows using a tiny 3rd party app called "closeall " though. It's my understanding it is now a paid app since it's developer sold it to NtWind.

Click to expand...

I use AlomWare Toolbox to close all my windows, using its built-in hotkey of Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Del (but you can change this to anything). Works better than CloseAll because after sending the close signal, any remaining stubborn windows get terminated instead. So you're guaranteed to have all windows truly closed and none left hanging open with something like "Are you sure?".

ALT + Spacebar, then C

you can also lock/unlock fn key

try fn + ESC to unlock/lock it

then you can use Alt + F4 again

for volume and other stuff press fn+ FKEYS



or you can use autohotkey

You can use both Alt+F4 and CTRL+Q
recommend to use that script as an administrator.

I am fortunate enough to have a keyboard with assignable macro keys (Logitech G815) so I made a "kill switch" and it works great. I couldn't do the same on my laptop, though. I just remapped the F12 key with Powertoys and it works. F12 wasn't that important.