Windows 11 users, take note: Microsoft recently introduced a hidden feature that lets you force quit an app that’s unresponsive (or otherwise stopped working) much faster than going the normal route.
The new functionality is an option to directly right-click on an app’s icon in the taskbar and select End of task to kill it there and then – the same way you can uninstall an app in Task Manager, but with much less hassle.
This traditional method to close a crashed or unresponsive app in Windows 11 (or Windows 10) is to open Task Manager (by clicking Ctrl + Shift + Escape is the fastest way), then you have to scroll down to find the malfunctioning software process. It is then a matter of clicking on the app and pressing the To delete key (or you can right click and select End of task (via the drop-down menu).
I find that I occasionally need to force quit apps, and doing so via Task Manager can be a bit of a pain. Simply clicking on the unresponsive app in the taskbar and closing it immediately makes life a lot easier, but while the option is now present in Windows 11, it’s not enabled by default. However, if you don’t mind diving into Windows 11’s menus a bit, it’s easy enough to turn the feature on (or off) within the Settings app.
How to enable the new task killer feature
Here’s how to enable the right-click option “End Task” on the taskbar. To do so, follow the steps below:
1. Open the Settings app – you can do this by pressing the button To win + I keys simultaneously, or search for it in the search box on the taskbar.
2. Select from the menu on the left System.
3. Scroll down and click on the ‘For developers’ (Please note that these settings are intended for developers, but we’re only going to make a small adjustment here. Don’t be tempted to change anything else here, though.)
4. Navigate to the End of task set and switch On by clicking the switch.
5. Try the newly enabled option on an app running on your taskbar.
6. Right-click on the app icon and select End of task – this should close the app.
To disable this feature, simply follow the steps above, but set the slider in step 4 to Out.
You may experience issues if you try this on larger apps or games because: as Tom’s Hardware points outthey can take a while to load – and they can crash and freeze before the icon actually appears on the taskbar. In this case, there’s nothing to right-click on the taskbar, and you’ll be forced to go into Task Manager and find the relevant ‘background process’ to stop that.
All in all, this is a handy shortcut and I can imagine it saving me a few moments of frustration in the future, plus it’s easy to turn on or off. It’s a commendable introduction from Microsoft and I hope to see more time-savers like this in the future.