How to close IPython Notebook properly?

There isn't currently a better way to do it than Ctrl+C in the terminal.

We're thinking about how to have an explicit shutdown, but there's some tension between the notebook as a single-user application, where the user is free to stop it, and as a multi-user server, where only an admin should be able to stop it. We haven't quite worked out how to handle the differences yet.

(For future readers, this is the situation with 0.12 released and 0.13 in development.)

Update December 2017

The IPython Notebook has become the Jupyter Notebook. A recent version has added a jupyter notebook stop shell command which will shut down a server running on that system. You can pass the port number at the command line if it's not the default port 8888.

You can also use nbmanager, a desktop application which can show running servers and shut them down.

Finally, we are working on adding:

• A config option to automatically shut down the server if you don't use it for a specified time.
• A button in the user interface to shut the server down. (We know it's a bit crazy that it has taken this long. Changing UI is controversial.)

If you run jupyter in the background like me:

jupyter notebook &> /dev/null &

Then to exit jupyter completely, instead of Ctl-C, make an alias command:

echo 'alias quitjupyter="kill $(pgrep jupyter)"' >> ~/.bashrc

Restart your terminal. Kill all jupyter instances:

quitjupyter

Note: use double quotes inside of single quotes as shown above. The other way around will evaluate the expression before writing it to your .bashrc (you want to write the command itself not 'kill 1430' or whatever process number may be associated with a current jupyter instance). Of course you can use any alias you wish. I actually use 'qjup':

echo 'alias qjup="kill $(pgrep jupyter)"' >> ~/.bashrc

Restart your terminal. Kill all jupyter instances:

qjup

I think accepted answer outdated and is not valid anymore.

You can terminate jupyter notebook from web interface on file menü item.

When you move Mouse cursor on "close and halt", you will see following explanation.

And when you click "close and halt", you will see following message on terminal screen.