Follow the platform. On macOS the App menu says Quit AppName (⌘Q) and the File menu says Close (⌘W). For Windows, the web and anything cross‑platform, Microsoft’s current Writing Style Guide says to use close — and tells you not to use exit or quit for shutting down an app at all. Keep exit for leaving a mode or a place, not a program.
Key points
- On macOS, quit ends the whole app; close ends one window or document.
- Microsoft’s style guide now says to use close, not exit or quit.
- Keep distinct actions distinct: “Close tab” and “Quit Chrome” are not the same thing.
- Name a dismiss control for what it does — “Close”, never “X”.
- Exit fits leaving a place, as in GOV.UK’s Exit this page component.
Table of Contents
The three words are not synonyms
Most of the confusion comes from treating them as interchangeable. They describe three different outcomes:
- Quit — the application stops running. Nothing is left in the background.
- Close — a window, tab or document goes away. The application may well still be running.
- Exit — you leave a mode, a state or a place. Exit full screen, exit kiosk mode, exit the building.
That third one is why exit reads oddly on a desktop app in 2026. When someone exits a room they can walk back in; the word carries no sense of the thing being shut down. Quit does, which is exactly why Apple chose it.
On macOS the answer is Quit
Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines set out a standard App menu, and its last item is Quit YourAppName. Apple describes it as quitting your app, and notes that holding Option changes the item to Quit and Keep Windows. The keyboard shortcut is ⌘Q; ⌘W closes the active window, and Shift‑⌘‑W closes a file and its associated windows.
Apple uses all three words, and uses them precisely. Quit is the app. Close is the window or document. Exit appears only in “Enter Full Screen / Exit Full Screen” — a mode, not a program. If you are shipping a Mac app, this is not a judgement call: matching the platform is what makes your app feel like it belongs, and macOS 26 Tahoe has not changed any of it.
On Windows, Microsoft’s own advice has moved
This is the part most articles on this topic get wrong, because the old answer was “Exit” and it stuck. The archived Windows 7 User Experience Guide really did specify a File menu ending in Exit Alt+F4, with Close above it for the current document. That page is still online, and still carries a banner saying it has not been updated for newer versions of Windows.
The current Microsoft Writing Style Guide says something different. Its entry for exit is a single line: don’t use it to describe closing an app or program. Its entry for quit is longer and just as blunt.
Microsoft’s guidance on describing interactions with the UI backs this up: its table of verbs has a row for Close covering apps, panes, dialogs, files, notifications and tabs, with examples like “Close the Alarms app”. There is no row for Exit. Current Windows keyboard‑shortcut documentation calls Alt+F4 “Close the active window” — the same key the 2009 guide labelled Exit.
Worth knowing before you cite this in a design review: Microsoft’s own current WinUI sample code still ships a menu item labelled Exit. The style guide and the sample code disagree. If you are writing new copy, follow the style guide.
Sometimes you need two words on one screen
Take Chrome. You can close a single tab, close an entire window, or shut the browser down completely. Photoshop and a slew of other applications work the same way. Using one word for all three is what actually confuses people — so this is a good reason to use two: “Close tab” for the tab, “Quit Chrome” for the browser.
Keep distinct actions distinct, and keep the same action worded the same way everywhere it appears. Nielsen Norman Group’s guidance on command names says the same thing: lead with a verb that describes what will happen, use two to four words, and if a command appears in more than one menu or dialog, use identical label text each time.
On the web: Close, Cancel and the X
Web apps rarely quit anything, so the real decision is between Close and Cancel — and they are not the same promise. Cancel means abandon what I was doing and discard it. Close means put this away; it says nothing about whether my changes survive. Using Close on a dialog that silently throws away edits is how you get support tickets.
Nielsen Norman Group’s article on this is direct: eliminate the ambiguous X icon in favour of explicit, text‑labelled buttons, because the main issue is the lack of a text label on the X. If you keep the X for space reasons, it still needs an accessible name. The W3C’s guidance on accessible names gives the rule and the example in one sentence: convey function or purpose, not form — if an icon that looks like the letter X closes a dialog, name it Close, not X.
In practice that means <button type="button" aria-label="Close">×</button>, and it means the visible label and the accessible name should agree wherever you can manage both.
The one place “Exit” clearly wins
The GOV.UK Design System has a component called Exit this page. Its purpose is to give users a way to quickly and safely exit a service, website or application — designed for pages holding information that could put someone at risk of abuse or retaliation, such as a service helping a potential victim leave a domestic abuser.
This is exactly the sense of exit that the desktop‑app usage borrowed and then wore out. The user is leaving a place, urgently, and going somewhere else. Nothing is being shut down. When that is genuinely the situation you are designing for, exit is the right word and close would be too weak.
Checklist
- Building a Mac app? Quit AppName in the App menu, Close in the File menu.
- Building for Windows or the web? Use Close, per Microsoft’s current style guide.
- Does the control discard the user’s work? Then it is Cancel, not Close.
- Is the app still running afterwards? Then it is not quit.
- Every X needs an accessible name of “Close”.
- Use one word per action, spelled the same way on every screen.
Getting a single label right is easy; keeping every label consistent across a product as it grows is the hard part, and it is the same discipline that keeps toggle button labels readable. If you want a second pair of eyes on the mechanical side of that — buttons with no accessible name, links whose text is just an icon — our free site audit will list them for you. You can also browse the rest of our design tools.
