Closing a Window Doesn’t (Usually) Quit the App

This one is the classic Mac confusion moment, and it does take a while to get used to. In Windows, closing the last window typically quits the app. On macOS, clicking the red close button closes that window, but most apps will still stay open in the background.

That’s not a bug; it’s how macOS is designed. Many apps are meant to stay active even without an open window, and macOS treats the window as a separate thing from the app itself.

You’ll know an app is still open because it has a small white dot below the app’s icon in the Dock (the tray of icons at the bottom of your screen), which lets you know if you actually closed it or not. 

If you close a window and the app still shows as running, don’t panic. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just need to follow the Mac way of quitting an app:

• Press Command + Q to quit the active app.
• Or right-click the app icon in the Dock and choose Quit.

It will definitely take a few tries to remember this. But once you get used to this, you’ll stop assuming an app is gone just because the window disappeared.