How to close Metro Apps???

Having installed Win8 Dev Preview on my desktop, non-touch Vista machine...

I am being driven up the wall trying to figure out how to close one of the metro apps once its opened. I notice that the "charms" side bar does not come up when I move the mouse to the (total) right side of the screen, and further, when I go to the bottom or top edges, I actually have to RIGHT click with the mouse to have those app bars come up (took me a while to figure that out - that made things even worse).

I am hoping these are bugs, but I would count it a really really bad move to not allow people to close apps! Sheesh! Very often you want somethign closed. You also don't want an extra app in the flipping through mix if you're done with it. Please tell me this is not by design??? Till now, the only thing I can do is go to desktop and by taskmanger kill opened metro apps. Also, the system seems to seem something wrong with it too, bec on shutdown, it notifies I have opened apps that I might loose info on ... but there's nothing else I can do to shut the darn things down! Requiring an always immersive state is already getting very risky, not letting you close the apps (no x button to kill it, anywhere ever) would be ... I hope it is just a bug, let's say that.

Thanks for the help.

@Eclipsoft:

yeah, check my [renamed] thread. the screenshot is very scary looking. And the only way to fix this is,

• log off - failed, black screen
• restart explore.exe
• shutdown and restart.

This is terrible IMO. This is not like Mango where they truely put the app on hold. The app is still there eating my resources and I can not do anything about them. The big problem is, Win8 allows multi-tasking, meaning, those apps still running are all allowed by design. And even when they are suspended, just look at scary RAM,

Kinda feels like using Windows Mobile. Maybe someone can write a hack that puts a kill button in the top right corner of every Metro app

yip - i had the same question - how do you stop anything you touch from running??

I suspect the answer is: You don't. Apps not in the foreground get suspended (except some don't, not sure how that works yet) so they aren't using CPU and Windows can trim their memory usage if needed. In the event of extreme memory pressure the runtime has the ability to terminate them, presumably apps are supposed to recover from this situation by saving state when then get suspended.

22 minutes ago,AndyC wrote

I suspect the answer is: You don't. Apps not in the foreground get suspended (except some don't, not sure how that works yet) so they aren't using CPU and Windows can trim their memory usage if needed. In the event of extreme memory pressure the runtime has the ability to terminate them, presumably apps are supposed to recover from this situation by saving state when then get suspended.

The problem with this approach is that if you start several metro apps the swipe to find app gets bloated with apps that you don't care about any longer. Also if you happen to be playing a game that has been suspended (say hours ago) when you swipe through your applications the game wakes up. At that point you may be in a new location where the noise would be undesirable. You could say "well just use the start screen to access your app instead" but that would be akin to saying "you're holding it wrong". I spoke to one of the MSDN documentation folks and she indicated that it was really up to the application developer to provide a close method. Being that this first batch of apps were written by inters it's not surprising that they left some things out.  

@DeathByVisualStudio: I think it's less "you're holding it wrong" and more "it's written wrong". Apps where it makes more sense to quit should offer a way to quit, apps for which it isn't really important shouldn't worry about it but should behave reasonably if they're momentarily switched in (games should probably be paused and quiet until interacted with for example).

Has anybody else noticed that when you do the task switch swipe if you don't let go and instead push the incoming app back off the screen, you can swipe in a different app? Every time you repeat the gesture without completing it, it shows the next app.

I don't agree that it should be up to the app developer to provide a close method. Every app on Windows now can be closed with Alt-F4 (at least as far as I know...if you make a window with no title bar, does this shortcut still work?)

I am now very concerned with Mango. I hope this is does not happen to Mango. If I remember correctly, Mango is supposed to hibernate apps back to storage soon after you switch app. If Mango is having the same problem as this, it would be sad

so far - metro seems like a great UI - that is missing 7000 things that used to be under right mouse options.

What i love about ALL versions of windows - is right click - options and properties

Everything i see i right click - and nothing happens (in metro)

Id expect metro to still follow the doctrine of - if its a thing in windows - you have options and properties for it

hey, i just noticed that you can infact close metro apps with alt-F4

not sure how that works with touch though

also, win+ctl+tab will dock the 'next' metro app and then cycle apps though apps in the docked pane

@aL3891:

that's awesome, at least there is one simple non-taskmanager way.

1 hour ago,spivonious wrote

I don't agree that it should be up to the app developer to provide a close method. Every app on Windows now can be closed with Alt-F4 (at least as far as I know...if you make a window with no title bar, does this shortcut still work?)

I would hope the MS Store approval process has a "must include a close button" as a requirement.

or really they could make it part of the settings page for the app, though it really should not be called "settings" sinceit contains other stuff as well

I've also noticed the Esc key works sort of like a "back" button. You can also quickly go to the desktop from the start menu that way, as long as no Metro apps are running.

Lol, guys you grab the app at the top of the screen and drag it down out of the screen.  That closes the app.