How do I exit a WPF application programmatically?

To exit your application you can call

System.Windows.Application.Current.Shutdown();

As described in the documentation to the Application.Shutdown method you can also modify the shutdown behavior of your application by specifying a ShutdownMode:

Shutdown is implicitly called by Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) in the following situations:

  • When ShutdownMode is set to OnLastWindowClose.
  • When the ShutdownMode is set to OnMainWindowClose.
  • When a user ends a session and the SessionEnding event is either unhandled, or handled without cancellation.

Please also note that Application.Current.Shutdown(); may only be called from the thread that created the Application object, i.e. normally the main thread.


If you really need it to close out you can also use Environment.Exit(), but it is not graceful at all (more like ending the process).

Use it as follows:

Environment.Exit(0)