If you're used to using Control-Alt-Delete on a Windows PC to display the Task Manager and have recently switched to using a Mac, you're probably wondering what the Mac equivalent to Control-Alt-Delete is.
Using the on-screen keyboard over physical one prevents clashes with the host operating system. What to Do After Using Ctrl + Alt + Del to Close an Application. Every time you use the Ctrl + Alt + Del Mac keyboard shortcut to close an application, you risk losing valuable data. Edit: Unfortunately, one of Apple's OS updates killed the above key combination for no good reason. So the only key combination available now is this less convenient one (if you have a Mac Mini or an iMac you have to press the physical Power button on the computer in addition to the other two keys in the keyboard): Control ⌃+Shift ⇧+Power ⌽.
Well, the bad news is that there isn't a direct replacement. However, there are a few different ways to accomplish the same thing on a Mac, like force quitting applications or checking on the system resources being used by applications. In this article, we'll show you how.
The alternatives to Control-Alt-Delete on a Mac
The closest equivalent to the well-known Windows keyboard shortcut on a Mac is Command-Option (Alt)-Escape. Pressing those three keys together pulls up a window displaying currently-running apps. It also shows you any apps that have hung and allows you to force quit them.
How to force quit applications on a Mac
- Press Command-Option-Escape.
- Choose the application you want to quit.
- Press Force Quit.
You can also access the Force Quit box from the Apple menu, by choosing Force Quit. And If you right-click or Control-click on a hung application in the Doc, an option to force quit it will appear in the contextual menu. If the Force Quit doesn't appear, press the Option key while right-clicking, and you'll see it.
How to see more information about applications on the Mac
Windows Task Manager does more than just allow you to force quit misbehaving applications. It displays a list of currently running processes and shows you the proportion of available system resources they're using. These can both be viewed on your Mac using Activity Monitor, a very handy tool tucked away in the Utilities folder.
How to use Activity Monitor
- Go to Applications > Utilities.
- Double-click on Activity Monitor.
- Click on any tab, e.g. CPU, to see the percentage of resources being used by running processes.
- Click on any column header to order processes according to their value in that column. Click the column header again to reverse the order.
- If you see a process that's taking up too many resources, select it and press the 'X' button in the toolbar to quit it.
Control hung and heavy consuming apps with CleanMyMac X
Most of the time when your Mac is slow and unresponsive, there's a particular app to blame. Some applications put too much pressure on Mac's CPU making your whole system slow. Detecting and quitting those apps can considerably improve your Mac performance.
With CleanMyMac X, you can easily handle heavy consumers. It's Optimization feature will identify hung applications and show you apps that are consuming lots of resources. CleanMyMac X is notarized by Apple, which proves it's safe for your Mac.
Here's how to manage heavy consuming apps:
- Download the free edition of CleanMyMac X and install it.
- Choose Optimization from the sidebar on the left.
- Press View All Items.
- Review the Hung Applications and Heavy Consumers sections.
CleanMyMac X also has a convenient menu bar item, which briefly informs you on current CPU load and memory status and lets you monitor CPU and disk usage, as well as free up RAM when you need to.
Manage login items
Login items are applications and utilities that launch when you log into your account. They run in the background so many users don't notice them, until they start consuming too much memory.
In Windows you can manage login items using Control-Alt-Delete. Here's how to do it on a Mac.
- Click the Apple menu and choose System Preferences.
- Go to Users & Groups.
- Select the Login Items tab.
- Click on any login item you want to remove.
- Press the '–' button at the bottom of the window.
Force restart your Mac
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If force quitting applications doesn't solve problems you're having with your Mac and the whole thing is frozen, you may need to restart it. However, if it has hung and all you can see is the beachball, you won't be able to use the restart option in the Apple menu. In this case, press and hold the power button until you see the Apple logo on the screen. If you have a MacBook with a Touch Bar, the power button is the Touch ID button. Alphabeta asteroids (itch) mac os.
There is no direct alternative to Control-Alt-Delete on the Mac, and the Mac doesn't have a task manager like Windows. However, there are several things you can do to replicate the features available in Task Manager, like force quitting apps and viewing the status of resources on your Mac. CleanMyMac X can also warn you when system resources run low and help quickly free up RAM.
Columns in the tables:
- Sym: The symbol representing the key
- Key: The common name of the key
- CrossPlat?: Whether the symbol is cross-platform. If 'No', then the symbol is unlikely to render properly outside the Apple ecosystem.
- Alt: An alternate symbol used in some contexts (e.g., legacy)
- Alt CrossPlat?: Whether the alternate symbol is cross-platform
Modifiers
When a key combination is displayed, the modifiers are written in the order presented here. For example, Control + Option + Shift + Command + Q would be written as ⌃⌥⇧⌘Q.
| Sym | Key | CrossPlat? | Alt | Alt CrossPlat? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⌃ | Control | Yes | ||
| ⌥ | Option | Yes | ||
| ⇧ | Shift | Yes | ||
| ⌘ | Command | Yes | | No |
The Command key was formerly represented by an Apple logo. The Apple logo is one fo the few symbols here that can be easily typed with a typical keyboard layout: ⌥⇧K
There is also an Fn modifier on modern Mac keyboards. Typically, this isn't seen in keyboard shortcuts because it's primarily used to access keys F1 through F20. However, it can technically be combined with Control plus one other key to get a unique legacy combination. Each of these Fn + Control combinations maps to a character in Unicode's U+F700 to U+F7FF private use range. Some programs will erroneously print these characters upon receiving such a combination. With system Mac fonts, these characters lack visible glyphs and are for internal use only. Quote from ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/CORPCHAR.TXT:
NeXT's OpenStep reserved corporate characters in the range 0xF700 to0xF8FF for transient use as keyboard function keys. The ones actuallyassigned in NextStep are 0xF700-0xF747, as follows. These are stillused in the Mac OS X AppKit frameworks. Note that there is no glyphassociated with these, and they are not mapped or used by the Mac OSText Encoding Converter.
Normal
| Sym | Key | CrossPlat? | Alt | Alt CrossPlat? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⎋ | Escape | Yes | ||
| ⏏ | Eject | Yes | | No |
| ⌦ | Delete fwd | Yes | ||
| ⌫ | Delete | Yes | ||
| ⇪ | Caps lock | Yes | ||
| ← | Left | Yes | ||
| → | Right | Yes | ||
| ↑ | Up | Yes | ||
| ↓ | Down | Yes | ||
| ↩ | Return | Yes | ||
| ❘⃝ | Power | No | ||
| ⇞ | Page up | Yes | ||
| ⇟ | Page down | Yes | ||
| ⇤ | Back tab | Yes | ||
| ⇥ | Tab | Yes | ||
| ↘ | End | Yes | ||
| ↖ | Home | Yes | ||
| ⌤ | Enter | Yes | ⌅ | Yes |
| | Context menu | No | ||
| ⌧ | Clear | Yes | ||
| ␣ | Space | Yes | ␢ | No |
| ⇭ | Num lock | Yes |
The alternate eject symbol, (U+F804), is from a Unicode private use region. Apple designates it for use with mapping to/from the Mac OS Keyboard encoding. Ideally, the official Unicode variant should be used instead, as it will be compatible with fonts on other platforms. Quote from ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/CORPCHAR.TXT:
The following (11) are for mapping the Mac OS Keyboard and Mac OS Koreanencodings (for Mac OS Korean also see 0xF83D, 0xF840-0xF84F).
Reference: ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/KEYBOARD.TXT
Seal, your fate??? mac os. These are the official Unicode symbol mappings published by Apple.
| Sym | Unicode | Mac | Key name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ⇧ | U+21E7 | 0x05 | Shift | |
| ⌃ | U+2303 | 0x06 | Control | |
| ⎈ | U+2388 | 0x8A | Control | ISO |
| ⌥ | U+2325 | 0x07 | Option | |
| ⎇ | U+2387 | 0x8B | Alt | |
| ⌘ | U+2318 | 0x11 | Command | |
| | U+F8FF | 0x14 | Command | Old; solid Apple logo |
| | U+F8FF U+F87F | 0x6C | Command | Old; outlined Apple logo |
| ⇥ | U+21E5 | 0x02 | Tab right (LTR) | |
| ⇤ | U+21E4 | 0x03 | Tab left (RTL) | |
| ⌤ | U+2324 | 0x04 | Enter | |
| ␣ | U+2423 | 0x09 | Space | |
| ↩ | U+21A9 | 0x0B | Return (LTR) | |
| ↪ | U+21AA | 0x0C | Return (RTL) | |
| ⌫ | U+232B | 0x17 | Delete left (LTR) | |
| ⌦ | U+2326 | 0x0A | Delete right (RTL) | |
| ⎋ | U+238B | 0x1B | Escape | |
| ⌧ | U+2327 | 0x1C | Clear | |
| ␣ | U+2423 | 0x61 | Blank | |
| ⇪ | U+21EA | 0x63 | Caps lock | |
| ?⃝ | U+003F U+20DD | 0x67 | Help | |
| → | U+2192 | 0x65 | Right | |
| ← | U+2190 | 0x64 | Left | |
| ↑ | U+2191 | 0x68 | Up | |
| ↓ | U+2193 | 0x6A | Down | |
| ↖ | U+2196 | 0x66 | Home | |
| ↘ | U+2198 | 0x69 | End | |
| ⇞ | U+21DE | 0x62 | Page up | |
| ⇟ | U+21DF | 0x6B | Page down | |
| | U+F803 | 0x6D | Context menu | |
| ❘⃝ | U+2758 U+20DD | 0x6E | Power | |
| ⏏ | U+23CF | 0x8C | Eject | |
| 英数 | U+82F1 U+6570 | 0x8D | Eisu | Japanese |
| かな | U+304B U+306A | 0x8E | Kana | Japanese |
| F1 | U+F860 F 1 | 0x6F | F1 | |
| F2 | U+F860 F 2 | 0x70 | F2 | |
| F3 | U+F860 F 3 | 0x71 | F3 | |
| F4 | U+F860 F 4 | 0x72 | F4 | |
| F5 | U+F860 F 5 | 0x73 | F5 | |
| F6 | U+F860 F 6 | 0x74 | F6 | |
| F7 | U+F860 F 7 | 0x75 | F7 | |
| F8 | U+F860 F 8 | 0x76 | F8 | |
| F9 | U+F860 F 9 | 0x77 | F9 | |
| F10 | U+F861 F 1 0 | 0x78 | F10 | |
| F11 | U+F861 F 1 1 | 0x79 | F11 | |
| F12 | U+F861 F 1 2 | 0x7A | F12 | |
| F13 | U+F861 F 1 3 | 0x87 | F13 | |
| F14 | U+F861 F 1 4 | 0x88 | F14 | |
| F15 | U+F861 F 1 5 | 0x89 | F15 | |
| F16 | U+F861 F 1 6 | F16 | ||
| F17 | U+F861 F 1 7 | F17 | ||
| F18 | U+F861 F 1 8 | F18 | ||
| F19 | U+F861 F 1 9 | F19 | ||
| F20 | U+F861 F 2 0 | F20 | ||
| | U+F802 | 0x0F | ||
| ✓ | U+2713 | 0x12 | ||
| ◆ | U+25C6 | 0x13 | ||
| ⇣ | U+21E3 | 0x10 | ||
| ⇠ | U+21E0 | 0x18 | ||
| ⇡ | U+21E1 | 0x19 | ||
| ⇢ | U+21E2 | 0x1A |
Some entries are missing key names; these don't map to physical keys.
LTR indicates usage with left-to-right languages: that means text flows from left to right, such as in most Western languages. RTL indicates the opposite. Many keyboards have both Delete Left and Delete Right, regardless of text direction.
ISO indicates a symbol designated by an ISO standard. ISO standard symbols aren't necessarily used by Mac.
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Symbols composed of multiple Unicode characters are special in that they are treated as a single character on Mac, despite appearing as multiple symbols. For most of the characters, this grouping is controlled by the first character, which is a Unicode private use character that is invisible on Mac. The others use standard Unicode combining techniques. Quote from ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/KEYBOARD.TXT:
The block of 32 characters 0xF860-0xF87F is for transcoding hints.These are used in combination with standard Unicode characters to forcethem to be treated in a special way for mapping to other encodings;they have no other effect.
