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VLC doesnt quit. How do I force quit the application?

Jacob Vlijm
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Joydeb Roy
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  • I tried using vlc's PID with the killall commmand but it returned as process not found – Joydeb Roy Apr 05 '16 at 10:07
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    open a terminal, type xkill + Return. Then click on the application's window. Must be a dupe of something. – Jacob Vlijm Apr 05 '16 at 10:08
  • killall expect a process name rather then a PID – cmks Apr 05 '16 at 10:08
  • I tried sudo kill -9 PID right now and it worked for me. – Joydeb Roy Apr 05 '16 at 10:14
  • Unnecessarily complicated, see my comment above. – Jacob Vlijm Apr 05 '16 at 10:15
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    Mored possible dupes: http://askubuntu.com/questions/13441/how-to-kill-applications http://askubuntu.com/questions/194471/how-can-a-frozen-locked-up-program-app-be-closed http://askubuntu.com/questions/4408/what-should-i-do-when-ubuntu-freezes – Takkat Apr 05 '16 at 10:27
  • @JacobVlijm Using xkill is much easier if a certain window stops responding but what happend was i did quit VLC but it was running in the background,so the VLC window wasnt available for me to close, so had I to use the alternative method. :) – Joydeb Roy Apr 05 '16 at 13:02

2 Answers2

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You can use based on name pkill 

pkill vlc

If that doesn't work, try:

pkill -9 vlc
terdon
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EdiD
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  • I removed the sudo because i) you should never run sudo unless necessary and ii) in this case, that would have killed all cases of vlc running on the system. Not only those belonging to the OP. I also removed the -9 because that is very aggressive and is not necessary here. – terdon Apr 05 '16 at 10:28
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    I used -9 because OP want "force" – EdiD Apr 05 '16 at 10:31
  • Yes, I realized which is why I added it back. Still, it should be used as a last resort, not on the first try and not with sudo unless you know what you're doing. Don't get me wrong, this is a good answer, that's my upvote there :) – terdon Apr 05 '16 at 10:41
  • I guess :) and for those who have more than just one e.g. vlc instance launched using xkill is a good way to resolve the problem – EdiD Apr 05 '16 at 10:47
  • Thanks, this saves me plenty reboots – Dieter Gribnitz Feb 16 '21 at 06:22
  • -9 only thing that actually worked for me – Chuck Oct 13 '23 at 11:25
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Run this command to find out the PID it is using

ps aux | grep vlc

then run

sudo kill -9 <PID NUMBER>
bhordupur
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