Close all open X-windows with a command in UNIX

Question

I have variable stand alone shell routines which I execute one after another automatically. Since every routine produces several X-windows figures I want to close all of them at the end without modifying every single routine. Is there a certain command?

Cheers!

As a side thing, closing only specific ones would be a nice thing, too. — Golar Ramblar, May 31 '17 at 08:30

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

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Based on answers to this question. xdotool looks like what you need.

To kill an X11 window given it's title, you can use:

xdotool search "Your window title here" windowkill

edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

Community

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answered Sep 10 '14 at 14:18

Richard Neish

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From the manpage: `windowclose` will close the window but not kill the controlling application, `windowkill` will kill the controlling application. So, `windowclose` will act like hitting the "close"-button on the window and the application can exit nicely, `windowkill` will be more like `xkill`. More refined search for window names I get with `xlsw` instead of `xdotool`, example: `xlsw | grep 'Firefox/Popup' | awk '{print $1}' | while read i; do xdotool windowclose "$i"; done`; `xdotool search` would miss the `/Popup`-part in the name. – Golar Ramblar May 31 '17 at 08:34

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 10 '14 at 10:49

Windows are owned by processes. One way to close windows is to kill their owner processes.

Another way is to start another X server, run your scripts with DISPLAY environment variable referring to the display of that X server, then terminate that X server with all windows.

Close all open X-windows with a command in UNIX

2 Answers2