Why can't you quit Finder ?

[Pinkyyy 💜🍎]

I've always wondered why the Finder app is always running and there's like no option to quit it at all.

Even if you try using Force Quit on it, it'll just relaunch automatically.

Is there a reason behind that ? I couldn't find an answer, so I'm just a little curious.

 

[Nermal]

This dates back to the original 1984 Mac. Back then there was no Dock, and the only way to launch apps was via Finder. It made sense that you couldn't quit it, because then you wouldn't be able to do anything else.

Even though there are other ways to launch apps now, Finder is still considered an integral part of the system.

 

[okkibs]

Finder also enables integral parts of MacOS, without Finder the Desktop is just the background picture without any files or menus to interact with. The desktop is essentially just a permanent Finder window.

With network shares you can sometimes still crash Finder on Monterey and Ventura to the point where it isn't restartable. That eventually hangs the system or at the very least breaks the dock, Spotlight as well as Mission Control and new apps no longer launch, and a system reboot will hang indefinitely only leaving holding the power button until the device reboots. You can still use already running apps in their existing windows (creating new windows might hang as well).

It's been like that since I started using Macs back when I had OSX Tiger, back then it was even worse on one of my Macs where killing Finder ended up blanking out the entire screen within a couple seconds, then you'd get the Apple reboot logo, and since Samba shares crashed the Finder on a regularly basis back then, this would sometimes happen twice a day...

Finder to me remains the worst thing about MacOS, as Apple never fixed the network share issues completely and Finder handles mounting network shares across the entire system, making it unavoidable even if you use Finder replacement apps like Commander One, Path Finder or Forklift.

 

[Gregg2]

I've always wondered why the Finder app is always running and there's like no option to quit it at all.

Why do you want to be able to Quit Finder? What benefit do you think that would have?

I've never really understood all the complaints about Finder. I haven't had any issues with it.

 

[Pinkyyy 💜🍎]

Why do you want to be able to Quit Finder? What benefit do you think that would have?

I've never really understood all the complaints about Finder. I haven't had any issues with it.

Yeah I agree, it's not really that big of a deal. It was just a curious question, nothing more 😅

I just prefer to quit all the apps that I'm not using to save battery, so I've always wondered why Finder is the only one that is always running no matter what. Otherwise, I never really had any issues with it either.

 

[Pinkyyy 💜🍎]

Finder also enables integral parts of MacOS, without Finder the Desktop is just the background picture without any files or menus to interact with. The desktop is essentially just a permanent Finder window.

I guess that also makes sense. If no apps were running at all including Finder, the menu bar at the top next to the  Apple logo will look like just a blank area with no menus to interact with. It'll probably look a little odd.

With network shares you can sometimes still crash Finder on Monterey and Ventura to the point where it isn't restartable. That eventually hangs the system or at the very least breaks the dock, Spotlight as well as Mission Control and new apps no longer launch, and a system reboot will hang indefinitely only leaving holding the power button until the device reboots. You can still use already running apps in their existing windows (creating new windows might hang as well).

It's been like that since I started using Macs back when I had OSX Tiger, back then it was even worse on one of my Macs where killing Finder ended up blanking out the entire screen within a couple seconds, then you'd get the Apple reboot logo, and since Samba shares crashed the Finder on a regularly basis back then, this would sometimes happen twice a day...

Finder to me remains the worst thing about MacOS, as Apple never fixed the network share issues completely and Finder handles mounting network shares across the entire system, making it unavoidable even if you use Finder replacement apps like Commander One, Path Finder or Forklift.

I'm not really sure about this whole issue since I don't really use network sharing very often, but I remember using it a few times before with a Windows computer and I never had any issues. I'm on macOS Ventura.

 

[Diskutant]

With network shares you can sometimes still crash Finder on Monterey and Ventura to the point where it isn't restartable. That eventually hangs the system or at the very least breaks the dock, Spotlight as well as Mission Control and new apps no longer launch, and a system reboot will hang indefinitely only leaving holding the power button until the device reboots. You can still use already running apps in their existing windows (creating new windows might hang as well).

That's not the Finder that hangs, but the Dock. The Dock does some additional stuff like Mission Control. You need to restart the Dock, that will make it responsible again.

It's been like that since I started using Macs back when I had OSX Tiger, back then it was even worse on one of my Macs where killing Finder ended up blanking out the entire screen within a couple seconds, then you'd get the Apple reboot logo, and since Samba shares crashed the Finder on a regularly basis back then, this would sometimes happen twice a day...

Sounds like you have some serious errors in the network shares. I use smb a lot and I rarely have problems with it, besides being slow and files/folders not showing because of different unicode normalization.

Finder handles mounting network shares across the entire system, making it unavoidable even if you use Finder replacement apps like Commander One, Path Finder or Forklift.

That's not true. I don't have Finder running and I mount network shares without a problem.

 

[KaliYoni]

no option to quit

It made sense that you couldn't quit it,

I'm running Monterey. When Finder is the active application, the menu bar command Finder > Quit Finder allows you to quit Finder. As well, the key combination ⌘-Q can be used.

----------
ETA: I might have enabled Quit Finder using a utility, as described by @dogface1956 . I don't remember doing so, though.

 

[dogface1956]

Mine has a menu option for Quit Finder. It can be added using one of the utility programs such as OnyX, Tinkertool, Cocktail, EtreCheckPro. I usually don't bother with quitting the finder, but sometimes when I am using one of the
Finder replacements such as Forklift or Pathfinder I will quit the finder to save a bit of memory.

 

[HDFan]

If Finder hangs and basically all disk device I/O stops you can just force quit it. It will respawn.

 

[volatility]

You can do so using the Terminal, without resorting to 3rd party programs:

defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool yes; killall Finder

This will give you the option to quit Finder in the Menu Bar or using CMD+Q... though as others have mentioned there is no point as you're basically taking away a lot of macOS' interface

To undo this:

defaults delete com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem; killall Finder

 

[okkibs]

That's not true. I don't have Finder running and I mount network shares without a problem.

You can do that via Terminal, sure, but when I use something like Path Finder it uses the Finder to connect, it does not have its own implementation to connect shares. Maybe it does still work without Finder? But then I'd rather not try to kill it on purpose as I don't want to risk making the device unstable.

That's not the Finder that hangs, but the Dock.

Doesn't matter, the initial problem was always the Finder crashing and not starting up again (it would either give you an error code that the program can't be opened, or clicking on Finder in Dock would just simply not launch it). I do not have a Mac with an old OSX anymore so this is pretty much solved. Since Monterey came out I think I had that issue a single time where Finder was no longer working and I had to reboot to get it back.

 

[Diskutant]

You can do that via Terminal, sure, but when I use something like Path Finder it uses the Finder to connect, it does not have its own implementation to connect shares. Maybe it does still work without Finder? But then I'd rather not try to kill it on purpose as I don't want to risk making the device unstable.

I don't use the Terminal to mount shares. But either way, the functionality doesn't depend on the Finder. Any 3rd party software like Path Finder can do that. I just tried it, I quit Finder and connected to a share using Path Finder. No problem at all. Because that functionallity is not part of the Finder. Finder only provides a gui for it because it's a Filemanger. And Path Finder does the same, it provides a gui to connect to shares.

Doesn't matter, the initial problem was always the Finder crashing and not starting up again (it would either give you an error code that the program can't be opened, or clicking on Finder in Dock would just simply not launch it). I do not have a Mac with an old OSX anymore so this is pretty much solved. Since Monterey came out I think I had that issue a single time where Finder was no longer working and I had to reboot to get it back.

I see, you were talking about old versions while I was talking about current versions.