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how to kill process in Mac OS X and not have it restart on its own

Fresh3 days ago
Mar 15, 2026155718 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

When I run with the proper process ID, the process stops but then is restarted and has a new PID. I'm trying to kill the process. How can I mimic the Activity Monitor in killing a process? In the Activity Monitor, when you press "Quit Process", the process permanently stops running, it is totally terminated. I figure that will do the same thing right? I had both the Activity Monitor and the terminal next to each other to see if the command works, but every time I do , the process in Activity monitor doesn't go away, it just refreshes with a new PID. So... how do I kill the process via the terminal?

Error Output

sudo kill -9 [PID]

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Fix for: how to kill process in Mac OS X and not have it restart on its own

Low Risk

The process you are killing is probably being managed by launchd, the proper way to stop it and have it not restart is to use . The plist that controls that process is in either or . If it is a system process and not one of your own, then you will probably have to use to get to work as desired. A better way try and stop it might be;

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