How can I quickly close many Windows/Programs?

Question

My workflow includes many open windows. Sometimes I want to clean up and close around 10 of them (but not all). How can I achieve this fast and simple on Windows?

Edit: "but not all" to me means "selectively", not grouped by program or name, and not always the same. During research phase, I usually have opened some diff tools, some console windows, some svn logs, some explorer windows and some plain text editors. I permanently have and keep opened a mail program, an IDE, the spreadsheet where I record my time spent and a browser. Opening huge projects in the IDE takes time, so I don't want to a killall or log-off-log-on procedure.

Answer 1

The fastest native solution seems to be Win + Tab and then middle-click the Apps to close them.

The best 3rd party solution I found is 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. You can configure it to close Tasks by middle-click to the tasks entry immediately in the task bar. Unfortunately, Taskbar Tweaker seems to be tailor-fit very closely to Windows and broke with every major update (Anniversary, Creator). The maintainer each time fixed it within some weeks, but meanwhile everything defaults to the old behavior of opening new instances instead of closing old ones.

Answer 2

In my case, I simply open the task manager, then in the tab Application, I select the Apps to close, then I click the End task button.

Answer 3

If they are windows of the same app, you can also right-click the entry in the task bar and select "close all windows".

Answer 4

Simplest, all keyboard-bound: Alt+Tab , hit Del to close highlighted window.

Tested on Win 10. Played around and found this solution.

Answer 5

If it is a known group of applications that you want to close each time you could use something like AutoHotKey to create a shortcut that closes just those windows.

Use the Window Spy (included with AHK) to most easily get the details you'd need about the windows and then use IfWinExist and WinClose commands.

Answer 6

Alt + F4 will close whatever window is in focus (and shut down windows if nothing is selected). You could combine this with Alt + Tab or Win + Tab to try to get to the desired windows quickly.

Answer 7

If they're the same processes each time (E.G. Notepad, Photoshop, and Chrome), you could write a simple batch script to close all of them at once. Then you would just need to run the script whenever you want to close them.

For example:

killmystuff.bat

taskkill /IM notepad.exe
taskkill /IM photoshop.exe
taskkill /IM chrome.exe

Note that this will not force close them - To do so, specify the /F flag. It will also kill all processes with that image name, so can't be used to close a specific group of Chrome tabs or similar.

You can also use filters to select groups of programs by username, window title, memory usage, etc - See taskkill /? for more details.

Answer 8

I find that the fastest way to natively achieve this is like this:

1. Click on the desired program in your task bar
2. alt + F4

This is quicker because you close precisely the programs you wish to close where as alt + tab-ing through your programs forces you to step over unwanted programs causing you to endure more time.

Answer 9

If you don't have a long login time (i.e. lots of startup-specific programs), then logging out is a reasonable way to do it. Assuming you don't have anything to save, that Chrome keeps your tabs, etc.

Answer 10

If you hover over the app in the taskbar, a preview will appear just above it that includes an X. You can move your mouse a very small distance to that X, and click it. You don't have to switch back and forth between mouse and keyboard.

Answer 11

The problem with just holding Alt + F4 is that it it sometimes will bring up the log off / shutdown / sleep menu.

I like to hold Alt + Esc to get all my windows in focus (by cycling through them) and then holding Alt+F4

Answer 12

In case the windows you mention are part of the same application (like a lot of separate files, opened by one single text editor), you might use Ctrl + F4

Answer 13

you can use:

1.Taskmanager to close windows.(The taskbar shows the currently running tasks)

i.Rightclick on taskbar

ii.click on start task manager

iii.In windowsTaskbar window,in applications tab you can see the applications which are all opened.select the necessary applications to be closed using ctrl key

iv.click on endtask button.

2.You can also "alt+f4"..Actually it closes the current running window

Answer 14

I've done something similar with auto-hotkey. Off the top of my head, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something with an F9 toggle like:

F9::Toggle
Loop, 100
{
    IfWinNotActive [, MadeUpWindowThatDoesn'tExist/Can'tBeFound]
    Gosub, sub1

    sub1:
    IfWinActive [, WindowYouWouldWantToKeepOpen]
    Gosub, sub2
    Else
    Gosub, sub3

    sub2:
    SendInput !{Tab}

    sub3:
    SendInput ^w
}
return

Now again, off the top of my head, it's likely a little different than this. If you copy and paste this bit of AHK, it likely won't work and you'll have to tweak it, but this is the core idea of what could work.

Answer 15

Because I have a multiple monitor setup at work, I found it sad that the Windows task-bar (by default) was* limited to one screen. I didn't like the various options to change this situation, so I made a tool of my own: SideSwitch. Warning: it's very tuned to my own way of working and may behave intrusive to your way of working if you're not used to it! When the mouse-cursor is at the edge of a screen - the center two quarters, not the corners - a list of windows is shown that are on that screen. Also "x" and "_" is shown to respectively close or minimize that window. (The main reason for the application was also to have the "Switch" button to painlessly move maximized windows between monitors, but since Windows 7 that's possible by dragging the maximised window's caption bar.)

*: recent Windows versions have more options