Killing off an annoying applications in OSX

howto.md

1. Bring up a terminal

2. Look for the annoying process using this command:

   $ ps aux | grep -i "annoying_app"

3. Output will look something like this:

   robert         63499   0.0  0.1  1000968   7888   ??  S    20Jul13  23:26.50 /Applications/Annoying_App.app/Contents/MacOS/AnnoyingApp -psn_0_97164452
   robert         68064   0.0  0.0  2432768    488 s026  R+    2:50PM   0:00.00 grep -i annoying_app
   

4. See the numbers in the second column? Find the row with your annoying app, and copy the number from the second column (in this case, '63499')

5. Execute the 'safer' kill statement:

   $ kill 63499

6. Check to see if it worked:

   $ ps aux | grep -i "annoying_app"
   >> robert         68327   0.0  0.0  2432768    488 s026  R+    2:50PM   0:00.00 grep -i annoying_app
   

7. It did! However, if the process is still sticking around, execute the 'less safe' version of kill:

   $ kill -9 63499

Note: If you get a 'permission denied' after trying to execute a kill command, you might need to use sudo and (potentially) enter an admin password:

$ sudo kill -9 23489