Apps

KillSwitch: Kill Every Messaging, Video, VPN,
and Social App in One Click

April 19, 2026  ·  VARØ Industries
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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, click yes — and by the time you're done, the meeting has started and everyone watched you clean up your taskbar.

I built KillSwitch because I got tired of that scramble. Double-click the tray icon and every messaging app, video conferencing tool, screen-sharing client, VPN, and social app on your machine terminates instantly. One click. Done.

Just want the download? The KillSwitch tool page has the features, install steps, and FAQ in one place.

KillSwitch system tray menu

How It Works

KillSwitch sits in the system tray. When you double-click it (or right-click and choose Kill All Now), it terminates every enabled app across six categories:

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

It knows the process names for all of these out of the box.

Kill by Group

Sometimes you don't want to nuke everything — just the messaging apps, or just the VPNs. Right-click the tray icon and choose Kill by Group to terminate only one category at a time.

Safe Process Guard

KillSwitch will never touch system processes — explorer.exe, svchost, lsass, csrss, and other protected processes are hardcoded as off-limits. You can't accidentally kill Windows itself.

Configurable

Open Settings from the tray menu to manage the app list. You can:

Settings are stored in %APPDATA%\KillSwitch\config.json, but you'll never need to edit that file directly — the Settings UI handles everything.

Optional Notifications

Enable toast notifications and KillSwitch will tell you exactly which apps it killed each time.

Get KillSwitch

KillSwitch is free and open source.

GitHub: VAROIndustries/KillSwitch

Install

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

Or build a standalone EXE: build.bat

Requires Windows 10/11 and Python 3.9+ (if running from source).

Start with Windows

Enable Start with Windows in the Settings menu.

Check out more free tools and apps at varo.industries/apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I close every messaging and video app before sharing my screen?
Double-click the KillSwitch tray icon, or right-click it and choose Kill All Now. It terminates every enabled app across all six of its categories at once, which takes care of the notification popups and tray icons you would otherwise be closing one at a time while everyone watches.
Which categories of app does KillSwitch cover?
Six: Messaging (Slack, Discord, Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Skype), Video Conferencing (Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, RingCentral), Screen Sharing (TeamViewer, AnyDesk, VNC, Parsec, Chrome Remote Desktop), VPN (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, WireGuard, OpenVPN, ProtonVPN and 20+ more), Social, and Windows Phone Link. The process names are all known out of the box.
Which processes will KillSwitch never touch?
System processes are hardcoded as off-limits — explorer.exe, svchost, lsass, csrss and other protected processes. You cannot accidentally take down Windows itself with it, no matter what is on the kill list.
Will KillSwitch tell me what it closed?
If you want it to. Toast notifications are optional, and when enabled KillSwitch reports exactly which apps it terminated after each run.
Can KillSwitch find apps that aren’t in its default list?
Yes. Settings includes a scan for running processes that are not yet on the list, so you can add whatever is specific to your machine. You can also enable or disable individual apps and edit process names.
Where does KillSwitch store its settings?
In %APPDATA%\KillSwitch\config.json. You should never need to open it — the Settings UI in the tray menu manages the app list, the per-app toggles and the start-with-Windows option for you.

Sources & References

  1. KillSwitch
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  4. ClaudeTray: A Battery Meter for Your Claude Code Rate Limits — VARØ Industries Blog
  5. PlainText for Claude: Stop Copying Broken URLs from AI Output — VARØ Industries Blog
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