Never - I want my external volumes on the home screen for easy access. The Dock is fine for me.
I used DragThing from very early on but didnāt really use it as intended.
I had a single palette populated with all the remote volumes I needed for work and set to Control-S (S for Servers). I had two Applescripts at the bottom of the palette - āmount volumesā and āunmount volumesā. I could log in to every server I needed at work by clicking āmount volumesā and the servers were immediately available through the floating palette. I turned OFF the desktop preference for showing external volumes on the desktop so it remained very neat and tidy and at any time I desired I could show or hide all the volumes by hitting Control-S again. It was awesomely efficient.
I never used Drag Thing myself, but how about John Siracusaās SwitchGlass?
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I canāt say that I have ever used Launchpad. If it is not in my dock, Spotlight (Command-Spacebar) is much too easy to use. What ever I am looking for will usually load into Spotlight with two or three key strokes.
I use iCollections, which seems to have more power under the hood than I use for just launching and grouping tasks together.
Same here.
I would not miss the lunch pad if it were discontinued,
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I use it to find apps not in the dock. Otherwise, no.
I donāt use Launchpad, because I find it has a more inscrutable organization than going to the Applications folder in name hierarchy. I havenāt figured a way to organize Launchpad differently, like the way you can move apps and such around on an iOS homescreen. Maybe I just donāt like Launchpad so I never researched a way to organize it differentlyā¦
I think more people use Spotlight than Launchpad. Or at least I only ever see Apple Geniuses at the store use it. Some of my younger users at work tend towards Spotlight also.
Do it just like you do in iOS.
Drag an app icon to move it. Drag an icon onto another icon to merge them into a folder. Long-press and everything starts wiggling, making some operations easier (and allowing deletion of app-store apps). Click the background to stop the wiggling.
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Oh, fantastic, more undiscoverable UI elements. Just what I love about iOSā¦ How many fingers to swipe from which direction do what now? 
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I havenāt looked at it in years. Is it still the same design Apple uses on their mobile devices and Apple TV which are long overdue for improvement? Android has this feature right. Besides which I never saw the point on the desktop. The Applications folder shortcut gives me quick access to an alphabetical list if I really want to see many icons, but even that hardly gets used. Very commonly used things still go in the Dock for me, but I mostly launch everything using the keyboard. Bring up the search, type two or three letters Iāve associated with an application and its launched. Keyboard use is a place where MacOS absolutely kills Windows.
I made my own version - a folder of aliases kept in the dock.
I never use LaunchPad, but I use my aliases daily.
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I use use Launchpad all the time. The finger pinch, type in a couple of letters and your app is there. As a many years experienced Mac user I find this is often quicker than a click on a Dock icon. Also use a older of aliasās in the Dock especially for triggering Automator scripts and for mounting some network volumes. .
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The funny thing is that only started using the Launch Pad on Monterey. For some reason, the little rocket launcher was not a serious app for me and I always used Spotlight. Then I found it much easier to use the launcher because it only searched the Applications folder. Faster and more efficient. Now I love it .
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I use Launchpad daily. A quick pinch on the trackpad, type 2 or 3 characters and Iām in. Many users recommend Spotlight as a launcher, and Iāve tried using it a few times, but Iāve always found it too slow and cluttered to be useful. So itās back to Launchpad for me.
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Much closer to āneverā than āoccasionallyā. But, perversely, not for launching apps. Only for uninstalling Mac App Store apps - and accessed via the trackpad pinch gesture.
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In a sense I create my own LaunchPad: I use the FInderās Application and Utilities folders in icon view, after meticulously arranging the icons exactly the way I like them.
And then, every single time thereās a macOS update (even just for a security update), Apple blows away my settings and I have to arrange them again.
Why do they do this? I mean, I know what they are doing (deleting the .DS_Store file in the Applications folder on the Data volume), but why? Just to annoy me?
With a trackpad, itās easy to open LaunchPad. Once itās open, Iāll type the name of the app I am looking for. Itās the fastest way of opening an app.
Sometimes I use LaunchPad if I just canāt quite remember the appās name, and then search for the icons, but thatās rare.
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Iāve never used LaunchPad.
Iāve used LaunchBar since I bought my first Mac ā¦ Jaguar? Panther? I forget. I donāt use most of the swiss-army-knife features, just the launcher.
I can see how LaunchPad might be useful when Iām looking for an app I donāt use very often. But Iām not sure how much better it would be than opening the Applications folder and scanning by name.
Since the Applications folder is no longer a single folder but a combination of multiple Applications folders in different volumes, they probably have to rebuild it after every system update & thatās why your custom settings get lost.
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