How to kill a process on a port using the command line

How to terminate a process on a port using the command line

Zombie processes are usually a pain to figure out. More often than not, I end up googling about how to kill a process on a port using the command line. It can be done using the activity monitor as well, but that is a time-consuming process.

There are ways of doing it using netstat and other methods which I kept fiddling through. But recently I discovered an npm package that is easy to remember and does the job pretty instantaneously. And since I am a JavaScript developer, this is a lifesaver instead of remembering terminal commands.

First, we need to install the “kill-port” package globally:

yarn global add kill-port

Bash

And then:

# Kill processes on multiple ports
kill-port 8080 8000

Bash

Or, if you want to do it in one step without a global install:

npx kill-port 8080

Bash

And that is it. Let us start nuking those zombie processes now.

Saransh Kataria

Born in Delhi, India, Saransh Kataria is the brain behind Wisdom Geek. Currently, Saransh is a software developer at a reputed firm in Austin, and he likes playing with new technologies to explore different possibilities. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science. He also shares his passion for sharing knowledge as the community lead at Facebook Developer Circle Delhi, NCR which is a developer community in Delhi, India.