kill a screen session

Question

I'm trying to kill a screen session. I noticed a lot of other related questions, but none of those answers are working for me. I am trying to kill the following session:

screen -ls
There is a screen on:
    23520.pts-6.porkypig    (09/30/2013 02:49:47 PM)    (Detached)
1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-root.

screen -r 23520.pts-6.porkypig

Now I am in the session. According to the documentation:

http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/screen.html#Quit

I am supposed to press "control a" and then "control \". I do that and nothing happens.

Another solution said to press Ctrl+a and type :quit. However, again it doesn't do anything. In fact, pressing control+a, absolutely nothing happens afterwards except a message "No Other Window"

score 286 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 16 '21 at 08:04

286

Identify the name of the session:

 $ screen -ls

Close a session:

$ screen -XS <session-id> quit

Rationale: -X = Execute command, -S session PID to execute on
Example: screen -XS 20411 quit
Source: innaM's Answer

edited Jul 16 '21 at 08:04

Miladiouss

340

answered Jul 05 '14 at 09:25

shgnInc

4,431

score 242 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 14 '20 at 00:14

242

first you need to re attach to the screen session
screen -r 23520 as you have done. Then press ctrl + a and then a k and press y when it asks if you really want to kill the session

Source

edited Mar 14 '20 at 00:14

Ben

1,020

answered Oct 09 '13 at 22:25

Jacob Minshall

2,846

Brian Thomas · Answer 3 · 2021-03-03T19:40:26.450

This command will kill all screen sessions, if that is desired:

So with all those official suggestions, I have one here that i feel is easier, and just as effective, and kind of more straight forward:

pkill screen

Who wants to go into an unknown and un-needed screen just to press in a couple commands that most might barely remember? This avoids going into it at all, and kills it straight off.

Plus, if you have more than one, this will take them all in one fell swoop.

score 14 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 15 '18 at 21:35

Like you, I wanted to kill my screen session and found the documentation unhelpful. Convinced that there must be a keyboard shortcut, I found that
ctrl + a then \
works

I then get the prompt: "Really quit and kill all your windows [y\n]"

I am not sure why the documentation says ctrl + a then ctrl + \. That doesn't do anything for me.

score 10 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 06 '14 at 13:59

10

This will kill all the detached screens:

screen -ls | grep detached | cut -d. -f1 | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill

This will kill all screens, attached or detached

screen -ls | grep pts | cut -d. -f1 | awk '{print $1}' | xargs kill

edited Sep 06 '14 at 13:59

Adaephon

5,061

answered Sep 06 '14 at 10:12

user324207

101

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 20 '21 at 10:58

5

we can also use the exit command to terminating screen

answered Jan 20 '21 at 10:58

Hiren Makwana

151

score 5 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 17 '22 at 01:33

5

You can use this to kill a session

screen -X -S <name> kill

answered Dec 17 '22 at 01:33

Furkan ozturk

151

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 21 '18 at 07:18

You can find the process id of the attached running screen. I found it same as the session id which you can get by command:
screen -ls
And you can use following command to kill that process:
kill [sessionId] or
sudo kill [sessionId]
You can kill the screen even if it is attached on some other terminal window.

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 26 '16 at 14:47

I encountered this problem when updating screen. The screen command would hang when attempting to reattach the session, regardless of how many -D or -R I added to the command. However, screen -ls conveniently provides the pid of the session, allowing you to intervene using the following:

10:42 user ~ $ screen -ls
There is a screen on:
        5730.my_screen     (Detached)
1 Socket in /tmp/screens/S-user.

10:42 user ~ $ sudo kill 5730

10:43 user ~ $ screen -ls
No Sockets found in /tmp/screens/S-user.

(This is similar to Brian Thomas's answer, but his will kill all running screen sessions, which may not be what you want if you have multiple screens open but only one misbehaving.)

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Sep 19 '19 at 13:18

0

Press ctrl+d to kill screen window. Repeat this until you kill all screen windows. Once you ran out all windows screen will kill the session and terminating. Shortest solution if you not having many windows

answered Sep 19 '19 at 13:18

Dilushan

1
1

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Feb 04 '21 at 21:06

0

You can just simply type exit while in a recording mode, I found out it to be most convenient as it directly exits the running screen.

answered Feb 04 '21 at 21:06

Utkarsh

1

score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Mar 01 '22 at 12:40

0

Simply, use the exit command inside a screen window and if you have a running process press control + z before that.

answered Mar 01 '22 at 12:40

Yavar Yeganeh

1

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Feb 10 '23 at 01:23

I believe what is being asked is how to 'quit' a screen session from within screen itself. This would kill all open terminals in the session and leave the user at the prompt for the parent terminal. The session can be suspended from within using CTRL-A, CTRL-Z. But this creates a a problem I'm trying to avoid which is leaving a bunch of opened screen sessions over time and then not knowing which ones are truly active and which ones I should have closed.

After lots of looking, I believe there is no way to do this. Killing them using the PID method is ok, but if there are many sessions open, some of which I might be using, I don't always know which ones to kill.

So what I do when I'm truly done with a screen session is to repeatedly hit CTRL-d to close each terminal individuly until the session completely exits.

This is the best solution I've found.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered Mar 11 '25 at 08:18

0

If you already are in the screen with screen -r you can use

STRG + ALT + C

to cancel the screen and exit.

answered Mar 11 '25 at 08:18

Isengo

518

kill a screen session

14 Answers14