This is because on these types of keyboards, the function keys have additional functions like adjusting the brightness of your screen or playback volume. It's common for this command to not work on laptops or multifunction keyboards. Alternatively, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager or right-click on the program you're trying to close and click 'End task.' To do this, press Ctrl + Alt + Delete, then click Task Manager. If Alt + F4 doesn't work, you can close an active application using Task Manager. Alternatively, press and hold the Alt key, then, while still holding down the Alt key, press the F4 key. Plus, if you have application and Finder windows spread about your various desktops, then you need to go around finding them and closing each one.To use this command, press the Alt key and the F4 key at the same time. You could press Command+W repeatedly to close a bunch of open windows, but that’s still not as quick as it could be. Quitting doesn’t work with Finder unless you apply a Terminal hack, and you may not always want to quit an app entirely-you might want it to continue to run in the background, like if you want Mail to continue to check for new items, or iTunes to play your jams.Ĭommand+W, on the other hand, will close the frontmost window. If you press Command+Q to quit an app, all of its windows will close. The most obvious option is quitting the application. RELATED: How to 'Quit' the Finder in OS X

Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut that will close all open windows at once, but you can close all of a given app’s open windows at once, making quick work of your cluttered desktop.

Let’s briefly review your different options.

If your Mac desktop is cluttered with multiple open windows, then you need a good way to quickly close them all without clicking every red x button one by one.

Close all windows