Fix MacOS Error 'The application is not open anymore' Like a Breeze

How do you solve the constantly showing up error "The application is not open anymore"?

MacOS (Sierra, High Sierra) and MacOS X (Yosemite, El Capitan) expose one system bug in common. When users are trying to interact with applications like Preview, Finder, App Store, Safari, Google Chrome, Xcode, Steam, iTunes etc, a curious error message would show up "The application xx.app is not open anymore". It's more like a stubborn error that you can never remove it permanently. Even restarting for several times.

That's weird because sometimes the named application is actually open and it's onscreen at the moment, the error still arises. Why?

Typically, once you've encountered this error the application in question will become unresponsive and you'll be unable to close and relaunch it using normal methods. Even if you do manage to close the app, then it'll usually refuse to disappear completely, for example, it may remain visible in your Dock, or pieces of the app will appear onscreen at random. You need to kill the associated app or process in order to regain the access to the application by applying some advanced methods.

We've divided all the viable solutions into two parts for your better selection.

Easiest: Download Mac cleanup software to remove the typical MacOS/Mac OS X error

EaseUS CleanGenius is an easy Mac maintenance utility to help make your Mac run faster and perform better. You can clean up Mac, free up disk space, and speed up your Mac in minutes. Just for your case, the super easy Mac cleanup and optimization software provide customers with an "Uninstall" feature, with its help you can uninstall the specified application from here and reinstall. You can definitely try it to get rid of the constantly showing up application error.

Steps to clean up Mac and optimize the application performance:

Step 1. Launch EaseUS CleanGenius and click on Uninstall under Tool;

Step 2. Find and select applications or programs that you want to remove and click on Uninstall;
Selected application, software or program will be removed in seconds.

You can also try the "Fast Cleanup" function, which is the other core feature built in the EaseUS CleanGenius. Sometimes, the startup application is with some improper configuration and it's likely to cause such an error "The application is not open anymore".

Extra: Some other attempts you could also make by each

Besides, we picked up some other workable methods that effectively kill the "The application is not open" error, too. You can also learn some of the recommended solutions in below.

One. Force Quit the app

Step 1. Click the "Apple" logo in your Mac's menu bar.

Step 2. Select "Force Quit".

Step 3. The subsequent popup displays a list of all the apps that are currently running on your Mac. If the misbehaving app appears in this list, then select it and click "Force Quit".

Step 4. Relaunch the app to see whether this easy fix has solved your problem.

Two. Quite the associated process

Step 1. Open a Finder window and navigate to "Applications "> "Utilities" > "Activity Monitor". Make sure the Activity Monitor’s "CPU" tab is selected.

Step 2. In the "Search" bar, enter the name of the application that’s been causing you problems, such as "Safari" or "Preview."

Step 3. Activity Monitor will display all the currently-active processes that include this search term. Note that this may include processes that are not related to the application in question, so automatically force quitting every process in this list may have negative consequences for other applications or even the wider macOS system. If your search returns any processes you’re unsure about, then researching this process online can usually turn up all the information you need to decide whether it’s safe for you to hit that "force quit" button or not.

Step 4. To force quit a process, select it and then click the little "X" button (where the cursor is positioned in the following screenshot).

Three. Delete the application's container folder

Step 1. Open a Finder window and select "Go > Go to Folder…" from the toolbar.

Step 2. Enter the following file path: ~/Library/Containers. Click "Go."

Step 3. Find the container that’s associated with the application that’s been causing you so many problems, for example, com.apple.mail is the container for the Mail app and com.apple.Preview is the container for Preview.

Step 4. If you haven’t already, create a copy of this folder and place it outside of the Library/Containers folder.

Step 5. Delete the app's original container folder.

Step 6. Relaunch the app, and see whether this has resolved your problem.

At last, though we feel really reluctant to recommend, it's the last resort you could utterly get rid of the annoying error each time you play with an application, which is a reinstallation of the Mac OS.