In article <KOKdnW3mspnBoa39nZ2dnUU7-amdnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) writes:
> Hello.
>
> Do you use app's menu's quit or the red solid circle? I always use the
> quit option to free up resources, but I see some people use the app's
> GUI red solid circle which leaves the app still running in the
> background which bog their Macs' resources down. :(
>
> Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. :)

Depends. Some apps really do go away when you close their window (red
circle), some don't, but keep running so they'll start up faster next
time (although the OS _can_, if they're properly designed to for
exaple save their data when the last window is closed or when told to
quit, quit them to free up resources, if needed).

I tend to get non-expandable systems maxed out at least on RAM. So I
can afford to leave some things running. If I have too many running,
or plan on doing something intensive (running a few VMs at once, the
browser with 400+ tabs, etc), I may close the ones that are biggest
relative to how long before I expect to use them again.

The automatic behavior of some staying running and being able to be
quit by the system to free resources, is probably "good enough" for
many people most of the time, although different apps do a differently
good or poor job of supporting Automatic Termination and/or Sudden
Termination.

Still, a human CAN do better judging what they want to keep hot and
what they don't.

Command-Q will also quit, which may be easier than the app menu. If
you have (depending on OS version) enabled the Dock preference for
showing an indicator for open apps, you can see a tiny marker below
the ones that are actually running, and can occasionally just look at
the Dock and quit from the Dock the ones that seem unnecesary or
excessive,

More details:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252483/what-happened-to-automatic-termination

On 2021-05-10 10:50:35 +0000, Richard L. Hamilton said:

> In article <KOKdnW3mspnBoa39nZ2dnUU7-amdnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
> ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) writes:
>> Hello.
>>
>> Do you use app's menu's quit or the red solid circle? I always use the
>> quit option to free up resources, but I see some people use the app's
>> GUI red solid circle which leaves the app still running in the
>> background which bog their Macs' resources down. :(
>>
>> Thank you for reading and hopefully answering soon. :)
>
> Depends. Some apps really do go away when you close their window (red
> circle), some don't, but keep running so they'll start up faster next
> time (although the OS _can_, if they're properly designed to for
> exaple save their data when the last window is closed or when told to
> quit, quit them to free up resources, if needed).
>
> I tend to get non-expandable systems maxed out at least on RAM. So I
> can afford to leave some things running. If I have too many running,
> or plan on doing something intensive (running a few VMs at once, the
> browser with 400+ tabs, etc), I may close the ones that are biggest
> relative to how long before I expect to use them again.
>
> The automatic behavior of some staying running and being able to be
> quit by the system to free resources, is probably "good enough" for
> many people most of the time, although different apps do a differently
> good or poor job of supporting Automatic Termination and/or Sudden
> Termination.
>
> Still, a human CAN do better judging what they want to keep hot and
> what they don't.
>
> Command-Q will also quit, which may be easier than the app menu. If
> you have (depending on OS version) enabled the Dock preference for
> showing an indicator for open apps, you can see a tiny marker below
> the ones that are actually running, and can occasionally just look at
> the Dock and quit from the Dock the ones that seem unnecesary or
> excessive,
>
> More details:
>
> https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252483/what-happened-to-automatic-termination
>

I have always used ⌘Q.