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Interesting app, curious what the use case is? Mac OS has always been good at managing resources for background apps (in my experience). I don’t mind if I have

Interesting app, curious what the use case is? Mac OS has always been good at managing resources for background apps (in my experience). I don’t mind if I have some extra open apps. I think I even have the setting activated that hides the ‘dot’ to show ‘running’ apps. Honestly, if you look in activity monitor there are over a hundred apps running without any windows being rendered. Maybe it’s because I’ve always had more ram than I need?

kome 4y ago
> Interesting app, curious what the use case is? I guess windows users?
DangitBobby 4y ago
I don't love having to right-click quit applications that are inexplicably still cluttering my dock after having closed all the windows.
- jb1991 4y ago
  I just command-Q when I’m in an app if I want to just shut it down completely. One step, no right clicking nonsense.
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    What's the point of a GUI OS then? Let's get rid of the mouse and trackpad too ...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jachee 4y ago
      What’s the point of a keyboard in a GUI OS, then? You can just copy/paste any text you need. Just because you can stand on your right leg doesn’t mean your left leg is useless. Learning to work with keyboard shortcuts together with your point-and-click skills will make you more efficient.
      - webmobdev 4y ago
        Way to miss the point - when there are two interfaces, and people are demanding that both have feature parity (or same level of ease of use), it is stupid to point that since one of the interface is easier people should prefer that.
- jamil7 4y ago
  You can quit from within the command+tab overlay by hitting q while you're stilling holding command and have tabbed onto the relevant application. That's how I do it.
m_eiman 4y ago
Yes, it's a bit of the vibe of iOS users who always force-quit all applications for some reason.
captainmuon 4y ago
Most apps on my M1 mac load instantly. And there is very little I can do with a loaded app that has no documents open (as opposed to maybe in the MacOS <= 9 era). But the icons stick around and clutter the dock. Eventually the icons will shrink or I confuse similar icons. If I want an app icon to stay, I can just pin it. Of course you can close the app manually, but that is cumbersome: You close every window with command-W or a click, but have to remember to close the very last window with command-Q. If you select the app icon to quit, it will not just activate the app, but open a new Window. So the best way is to right click the dock icon and close. But then you have to think if there is still an window open or not, so you don't accidentially close it. It's not a big deal, but it is a slight annoyance, just like how you can't close minimized windows. Apple actually implemented auto quitting apps in the Lion era, but removed it (probably because it was to Windowsy?).
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  > Apple actually implemented auto quitting apps in the Lion era macOS applications can still choose to close the app automatically when the last windows closes: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsapplicationdelegate/1428381-applicationshouldterminateafterl https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsapplicati...
- ace2358 4y ago
  Pro-tip: you can quit apps from the cmd-tab view! While holding cmd press tab to get to your app, then while holding cmd, press q. App quit.
radley 4y ago
I quit apps due to the hassle/delay of app windows loading after a restart. (macOS can't discern between apps I shut off manually before a restart and apps the OS shut off for the restart, so it ends up opening everything anyway.)
flohofwoe 4y ago
I find it incredibly confusing and pointless when I'm alt-tabbing to an application, but then "nothing happens" (e.g. only the menu bar changes but the app has no windows open - I really can't understand why such ancient "MacOS-isms" are still carried along - like, what's the point of a UI application lingering around when there's no UI?) Disclaimer: Mac is my main platform since around 2010, before that Windows, and before that Amiga - one would think that more than a decade would be enough to acclimate, but the whole application model on Mac still feels weird :)
- pantulis 4y ago
  "What's the point of a UI application lingering around when there's no UI?)" To create a new document window if you need it.
marssaxman 4y ago
Apparently Windows users find it confusing to have a windowless app, because it's not what they're used to. I can see why they might want this utility.
jmbwell 4y ago
Having taken a moment to look at this, I think I'm going to conclude that while this nicely implemented, this is mostly a tool for satisfying personal preferences. It looks like this app just sends a request to terminate (AppKit.NSRunningApplication.terminate()) to any app with no open windows (after a delay). If the app is already ready to terminate (termination counter is 0), most of the terminate work has likely already been done, and the app will probably just get killed. If the app isn't ready to terminate, invoking terminate is going to cause it to wake up and do whatever its own processes for terminating might be. For something lumbering and bloated like an Adobe app, this is going to be a ton of stuff. For modern macOS apps with good support for sudden termination/automatic termination, this is probably little or nothing at all. So for apps that work well on macOS, this accomplishes little more than removing the icon from the dock and the app switcher. For apps that don't work well on macOS, this might or might not help things work any better. With other operating systems, maybe quitting unused apps is worthwhile for performance or battery life or whatever. And some applications on the Mac, like (unfortunately) Excel, don't cooperate as well as they could with OS resource management, so quitting them when you're not using them is probably good. Otherwise, a modern macOS app that goes idle is going to be compressed and paged out and suspended so that it's not really soaking up any resources if it's not doing anything (even if it has windows and documents open, incidentally). So, sure, quit apps with no open windows if you just want a tidy dock and app switcher. Unless I'm missing something, I think that might be all you're really getting.

kome 4y ago

> Interesting app, curious what the use case is? I guess windows users?

DangitBobby 4y ago

I don't love having to right-click quit applications that are inexplicably still cluttering my dock after having closed all the windows.

jb1991 4y ago
I just command-Q when I’m in an app if I want to just shut it down completely. One step, no right clicking nonsense.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  What's the point of a GUI OS then? Let's get rid of the mouse and trackpad too ...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jachee 4y ago
    What’s the point of a keyboard in a GUI OS, then? You can just copy/paste any text you need. Just because you can stand on your right leg doesn’t mean your left leg is useless. Learning to work with keyboard shortcuts together with your point-and-click skills will make you more efficient.
    - webmobdev 4y ago
      Way to miss the point - when there are two interfaces, and people are demanding that both have feature parity (or same level of ease of use), it is stupid to point that since one of the interface is easier people should prefer that.
jamil7 4y ago
You can quit from within the command+tab overlay by hitting q while you're stilling holding command and have tabbed onto the relevant application. That's how I do it.

m_eiman 4y ago

Yes, it's a bit of the vibe of iOS users who always force-quit all applications for some reason.

captainmuon 4y ago

Most apps on my M1 mac load instantly. And there is very little I can do with a loaded app that has no documents open (as opposed to maybe in the MacOS <= 9 era). But the icons stick around and clutter the dock. Eventually the icons will shrink or I confuse similar icons. If I want an app icon to stay, I can just pin it. Of course you can close the app manually, but that is cumbersome: You close every window with command-W or a click, but have to remember to close the very last window with command-Q. If you select the app icon to quit, it will not just activate the app, but open a new Window. So the best way is to right click the dock icon and close. But then you have to think if there is still an window open or not, so you don't accidentially close it. It's not a big deal, but it is a slight annoyance, just like how you can't close minimized windows. Apple actually implemented auto quitting apps in the Lion era, but removed it (probably because it was to Windowsy?).

flohofwoe 4y ago
> Apple actually implemented auto quitting apps in the Lion era macOS applications can still choose to close the app automatically when the last windows closes: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsapplicationdelegate/1428381-applicationshouldterminateafterl https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsapplicati...
ace2358 4y ago
Pro-tip: you can quit apps from the cmd-tab view! While holding cmd press tab to get to your app, then while holding cmd, press q. App quit.

radley 4y ago

I quit apps due to the hassle/delay of app windows loading after a restart. (macOS can't discern between apps I shut off manually before a restart and apps the OS shut off for the restart, so it ends up opening everything anyway.)

flohofwoe 4y ago

I find it incredibly confusing and pointless when I'm alt-tabbing to an application, but then "nothing happens" (e.g. only the menu bar changes but the app has no windows open - I really can't understand why such ancient "MacOS-isms" are still carried along - like, what's the point of a UI application lingering around when there's no UI?) Disclaimer: Mac is my main platform since around 2010, before that Windows, and before that Amiga - one would think that more than a decade would be enough to acclimate, but the whole application model on Mac still feels weird :)

pantulis 4y ago
"What's the point of a UI application lingering around when there's no UI?)" To create a new document window if you need it.

marssaxman 4y ago

Apparently Windows users find it confusing to have a windowless app, because it's not what they're used to. I can see why they might want this utility.

jmbwell 4y ago

Having taken a moment to look at this, I think I'm going to conclude that while this nicely implemented, this is mostly a tool for satisfying personal preferences. It looks like this app just sends a request to terminate (AppKit.NSRunningApplication.terminate()) to any app with no open windows (after a delay). If the app is already ready to terminate (termination counter is 0), most of the terminate work has likely already been done, and the app will probably just get killed. If the app isn't ready to terminate, invoking terminate is going to cause it to wake up and do whatever its own processes for terminating might be. For something lumbering and bloated like an Adobe app, this is going to be a ton of stuff. For modern macOS apps with good support for sudden termination/automatic termination, this is probably little or nothing at all. So for apps that work well on macOS, this accomplishes little more than removing the icon from the dock and the app switcher. For apps that don't work well on macOS, this might or might not help things work any better. With other operating systems, maybe quitting unused apps is worthwhile for performance or battery life or whatever. And some applications on the Mac, like (unfortunately) Excel, don't cooperate as well as they could with OS resource management, so quitting them when you're not using them is probably good. Otherwise, a modern macOS app that goes idle is going to be compressed and paged out and suspended so that it's not really soaking up any resources if it's not doing anything (even if it has windows and documents open, incidentally). So, sure, quit apps with no open windows if you just want a tidy dock and app switcher. Unless I'm missing something, I think that might be all you're really getting.