Bug 508366

Summary:	Don't allow "app not responding" stuff if app was told to close
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	minelorderagon16
Component:	general	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	normal	CC:	nate
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	6.4.4
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description minelorderagon16 2025-08-17 03:55:46 UTC

SUMMARY
Often, and especially with games, when I try to close an app it just goes into the "not responding" state instead of closing. it then gives a popup asking if I want to terminate the app or wait for it to respond. this is really annoying because that popup is for apps that are actually not responding, but it is currently popping up any time i try to close a game. I would like to have all of the "not responding" systems be blocked if an app was manually told to close by the user. for example, if I close a window using the close button in the titlebar, the close button in the overview, or the close button in the task manager context menu, it should not be allowed to report itself as not responding. It has been commanded to close, but it is refusing to and so the popup that is meant for frozen apps has been turned into a "are you sure you want to quit?" prompt. this is clearly incorrect behavior. Ideally, I'd actually like to see apps be forced to close if they do not comply when told to but I get that most users would probably find that behavior annoying.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. open app (i'd recommend a game, beamng does it reliably for me) that freezes when told to close
2. close it using titlebar, overview, or task manager
3. observe as instead of closing it gives the "not responding" stuff

OBSERVED RESULT
window is treated as not responding

EXPECTED RESULT
window closes when told to and cannot be treated as not responding (because a closed window can't respond anyway)

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Fedora Linux 42
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.17.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1
Kernel Version: 6.15.9-201.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 4600H with Radeon Graphics
Memory: 16 GiB of RAM (15.0 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon Graphics
Graphics Processor 2: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 82B5
System Version: Lenovo Legion 5 15ARH05

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Comment 1 Nate Graham 2025-08-18 20:45:18 UTC

The app is in fact not responding. You told it to close, and it didn't close; instead it started hanging. KWin noticed and offered to kill it for you.

What would you prefer to happen instead when an app starts hanging after you tell it to close?

Comment 2 minelorderagon16 2025-08-18 20:51:20 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> The app is in fact not responding. You told it to close, and it didn't
> close; instead it started hanging. KWin noticed and offered to kill it for
> you.
> 
> What would you prefer to happen instead when an app starts hanging after you
> tell it to close?

I would prefer for it to be forced to close, or at least to have the option to make that happen. If i've told an app to close, it is reasonable to assume I dont want it to be open anymore. When an app is told to close but doesnt, even if its just because it froze, it can be very disruptive to what the user is doing. With a normal app this isn't too bad as you can just work around it, but with games that are set to fullscreen it renders the entire virtual desktop unusable until they close. They typically also make it so the prompt does not show up properly so the user has to alt+tab to it first.

Comment 3 Nate Graham 2025-08-18 20:57:59 UTC

> I would prefer for it to be forced to close, or at least to have the option to make that happen.

You do have that option: use the "app not responding" window to force-close it.

> If i've told an app to close, it is reasonable to
> assume I dont want it to be open anymore. When an app is told to close but
> doesnt, even if its just because it froze, it can be very disruptive to what
> the user is doing. With a normal app this isn't too bad as you can just work
> around it, but with games that are set to fullscreen it renders the entire
> virtual desktop unusable until they close. They typically also make it so
> the prompt does not show up properly so the user has to alt+tab to it first.

This seems like something that's easy and obvious, but it's actually not. If we unconditionally force-closed windows that started hanging after some fixed period of time, it could cause data loss. Imagine the app starts hanging on close for 6 seconds to save its state. If an auto-kill timer killed it at 5 seconds, the app would die while it was still writing data to disk, and that data would be corrupted.

With the app not responding window, you get to make the decision about whether the risk of this is acceptable to you, rather than the system making that decision for you.

So I'm afraid we can't do what you're proposing, sorry. If you want to kill a hanging window right away, Meta+Ctrl+Esc will allow you to do that.