We prove that the outer automorphism group Out(G) is residually finite when the group G is virtually compact special (in the sense of Haglund and Wise) or when G is isomorphic to the fundamental group of some compact 3-manifold. To prove these results we characterize commensurating endomorphisms of acylindrically hyperbolic groups. An endomorphism φ of a group G
Nearby in the stack
is said to be commensurating, if for every
g∈G
some non-zero power of
φ(g)
is conjugate to a non-zero power of
g
. Given an acylindrically hyperbolic group
G
, we show that any commensurating endomorphism of
G
is inner modulo a small perturbation. This generalizes a theorem of Minasyan and Osin, which provided a similar statement in the case when
G
is relatively hyperbolic. We then use this result to study pointwise inner and normal endomorphisms of acylindrically hyperbolic groups.