Interactive process killer for Linux and macOS

Are you tired of running kill and pkill Linux commands every time you need to terminate a running Linux/macOS process?. Here I’ll introduce you to top interactive Linux and Unix command line tools to Fabulously kill processes on these systems.

These command line tools that aim at making the killing of processes on Linux and macOS easy and interactive are:

Unlike the kill command, you don’t need to know the process name or process ID. It has an interactive menu which you can scroll through to see all running processes on the system.

Install fkill on Linux and macOS

The fkill-cli tool depends on Node.js. You should have Node.js installed for it to be installed and run. For a guide on installing Node.js on major Linux distributions and macOS, check:

Install latest Node.js and npm on CentOS 7 / Ubuntu 16.04 / Arch Linux / macOS

Once you have Node.js installed, use npm command to install fkill as shown.

$ npm install fkill

How to Use fkill

CLI Usage:

$ fkill [<pid|name|:port> …]

When operating with options, you can pass process name, process id, or process port number to it. The process will be killed.

Typing fkill without any option will start it in an interactive mode. You can scroll through the list of applications and press <enter or return> key to kill it.

Options:

–force -f –> Force kill
–verbose -v –> Show process arguments

Examples:

$ fkill 1500 --> Kill process with id 1600
$ fkill zoom --> Kill process named zoom
$ fkill:8443 --> Kill process listening on port 8443
$ fkill 1500 zoom: 8443 --> Kill above processes with one command
$ fkill

To kill a port, prefix it with a colon. For example: :8443.

Installing gkill

gkill requires golang installed for it to work. Download and install Golang then run:

$ go get github.com/heppu/gkill

Once installed you can launch it using:

$ gkill