I don’t know about you, but for me, killing processes from the command line always involved a ritual: run ps aux, scroll through output, find the target, copy the PID, then kill it. Or maybe grep for a pattern, parse column 2, and hope I picked the right one.

Now I use a better way. Meet fzkill: a shell function that I use to interactively fuzzy-search my running processes and kill them with immediate visual feedback.

What it does

fzkill() {
  local pid=$(ps aux | fzf --header="Select a process to kill" --preview="echo {}" | awk '{print $2}')

  if [ -z "$pid" ]; then
    print -P "%F{yellow}❌ No process selected, operation canceled%f"
    return 1
  fi

  if kill "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
    print -P "%F{green}✅ Successfully killed process $pid%f"
  else
    print -P "%F{red}⚠️  Failed to kill process $pid (may require sudo or process doesn't exist)%f"
    return 1
  fi
}

Run fzkill, start typing to filter processes, hit Enter, done. I get:

• 🟡 ⚠️ when I cancel (press Esc or Ctrl+C)
• 🟢 ✅ when the process is killed successfully
• 🔴 ❌ when it fails (permissions or the process disappeared)

How to install

Prerequisites

You need fzf installed. Most package managers have it, I use brew:

# macOS
brew install fzf

For Zsh

Add the function to your ~/.zshrc:

fzkill() {
  local pid=$(ps aux | fzf --header="Select a process to kill" --preview="echo {}" | awk '{print $2}')

  if [ -z "$pid" ]; then
    print -P "%F{yellow}⚠️ No process selected, operation canceled%f"
    return 1
  fi

  if kill "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
    print -P "%F{green}✅ Successfully killed process $pid%f"
  else
    print -P "%F{red}❌  Failed to kill process $pid (may require sudo or process doesn't exist)%f"
    return 1
  fi
}

Reload your shell:

source ~/.zshrc

For Bash

Add to your ~/.bashrc:

fzkill() {
  local pid=$(ps aux | fzf --header="Select a process to kill" --preview="echo {}" | awk '{print $2}')

  if [ -z "$pid" ]; then
    echo -e "\033[0;33m⚠️ No process selected, operation canceled\033[0m"
    return 1
  fi

  if kill "$pid" 2>/dev/null; then
    echo -e "\033[0;32m✅ Successfully killed process $pid\033[0m"
  else
    echo -e "\033[0;31m❌  Failed to kill process $pid (may require sudo or process doesn't exist)\033[0m"
    return 1
  fi
}

Reload:

source ~/.bashrc

Design notes

Why kill instead of kill -9? SIGTERM (the default) lets processes clean up gracefully: flush buffers, close connections, save state. SIGKILL (-9) is immediate and brutal, leaving the proces no time to cleanup.

Why fzf? Interactive fuzzy search is better than grepping. You see what you’re about to kill, and you can type partial matches: “chro” finds Chrome, “node” finds all Node processes.

Usage tips

• Filter fast: Start typing immediately after running fzkill. “python”, “node”, “postgres” - fzf narrows as you type.
• Preview is helpful: The preview pane shows the full ps aux line, so you can double-check before killing.
• Cancel safely: Just hit Esc or Ctrl+C if you change your mind.
• Permissions: If you get ⚠️, you might need sudo. Or the process died between selection and kill.

Variants

• Want SIGKILL by default? Change kill "$pid" to kill -9 "$pid".
• Want to kill multiple processes? Pipe through xargs and adapt the selection logic.
• Want to filter by user? Add | grep $USER before fzf.