On Apple Mac computers, if you use the Force Quit feature, you may notice some programs show up as running that are not running. You can see they are not running because their icon in the Dock does not have the ‘dot’ below it that would signify the program is running.
You may be tempted to Force Quit these ghost apps. However, a safer way to address this issue would be to start the listed app, then quit out of it properly. Then that app will no longer be listed.
Always use caution with the Force Quit feature because you may end up forcing a task or program to quit while it is in the middle of writing to your hard drive, and this can over time lead to a corrupted drive.
Whenever you do use Force Quit, it is a good idea to run the First Aid task found in Disk Utility. That will correct the drive corruption that comes from partially written files.