Free Windows Tool

Kill Every Distraction App
in One Click

About to share your screen? KillSwitch instantly terminates every messaging, video conferencing, screen-sharing, VPN, and social app on your machine with a single double-click. A panic button for your taskbar.

Get KillSwitch on GitHub Read the Launch Post
FreeOpen SourceWindows 10 / 11System Tray

The Problem

You're about to share your screen in a meeting. Slack is popping notifications. Discord is dinging. WhatsApp desktop is showing message previews. Teams is doing whatever Teams does. Maybe a VPN client is visible in the tray that you'd rather not explain.

You scramble to close them one at a time — right-click, quit, right-click, quit, wait for the "are you sure?" dialog — and by the time you're done, the meeting has started and everyone watched you clean up your taskbar.

KillSwitch system tray menu on Windows

What It Kills

Double-click the tray icon (or right-click and choose Kill All Now) and KillSwitch terminates every enabled app across six categories. It knows the process names for all of these out of the box:

CategoryExamples
MessagingSlack, Discord, Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Skype
Video ConferencingZoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, RingCentral
Screen SharingTeamViewer, AnyDesk, VNC, Parsec, Chrome Remote Desktop
VPNNordVPN, ExpressVPN, WireGuard, OpenVPN, ProtonVPN, and 20+ more
SocialFacebook, Instagram
Phone LinkWindows Phone Link / Your Phone
Kill by Group
Don't want to nuke everything? Terminate only one category at a time — just the messaging apps, or just the VPNs.
Safe Process Guard
explorer.exe, svchost, lsass, csrss, and other protected processes are hardcoded as off-limits. You can't accidentally kill Windows itself.
Fully Configurable
Enable/disable individual apps, edit process names, add custom apps, and scan for running processes not yet in the list — all from the Settings UI.
Optional Notifications
Enable toast notifications and KillSwitch tells you exactly which apps it killed each time.

Install

KillSwitch is free and open source. It requires Windows 10/11 and Python 3.9+ (if running from source), or build a standalone EXE with build.bat.

git clone https://github.com/VAROIndustries/KillSwitch.git cd KillSwitch pip install -r requirements.txt python killswitch.py

To launch at login, enable Start with Windows in the Settings menu. Source and documentation: github.com/VAROIndustries/KillSwitch

FAQ

What apps can KillSwitch close?
KillSwitch knows the process names for apps across six categories out of the box: messaging (Slack, Discord, Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Skype), video conferencing (Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, RingCentral), screen sharing (TeamViewer, AnyDesk, VNC, Parsec, Chrome Remote Desktop), VPNs (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, WireGuard, OpenVPN, ProtonVPN, and 20+ more), social apps (Facebook, Instagram), and Windows Phone Link.
Can I kill just one category of apps?
Yes. Right-click the tray icon and choose Kill by Group to terminate only one category at a time — just the messaging apps, or just the VPNs, without touching everything else.
Can KillSwitch accidentally break Windows?
No. System processes like explorer.exe, svchost, lsass, and csrss are hardcoded as off-limits — KillSwitch will never touch protected processes, so you can't accidentally kill Windows itself.
Can I add my own apps to the kill list?
Yes. Open Settings from the tray menu to enable or disable individual apps, edit process names, add custom apps that aren't in the default list, and scan for running processes not yet in the list.

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