I have used LaunchBar for a number of years and was not motivated to learn and adjust my habits for a similar feature from Apple. If a review or comments here are ‘glowing’, I might be enticed to invest some time in switching.
What’s blown away is the Finder settings, not Launchpad. Finder icon arrangements are stored in .DS_Store files.
Maybe I should create a script to restore the Applications and Utilities .DS_Store files from the most recent Time Machine backup.
Yeah, but those .DS_Store files are a lot more volatile than the ones for the Launchpad database. Anyway, I thought maybe you’d be interested in trying Launchpad if you knew you could easily preserve those settings.
How is Launchpad any different from having the Application folder in the Dock? Launchpad is over on the left, by default, and my Application folder link is on the right next to the Download folder link. Just depends where my mouse is on the screen as to which I open.
I’ve been using Launchpad almost since it was introduced. I haven’t seen the system lose track of my icon organization. At least not the entire organization - occasionally individual apps.
Sometimes, when an app gets upgraded, its icon ends up moving from where I put it (usually in a folder) to its default location (at the end of the list or in a specific folder). I assume this happens because the upgrade utility performed the upgrade by a delete-then-reinstall method, instead of upgrading the app package’s contents in-place or using Apple’s file-replacement API which should let the code responsible for Launchpad (the Dock, I believe) realize that this is an upgrade and not a new installation.
But this doesn’t happen very often. Only for certain apps (often Adobe’s apps) and even then only when they have major updates. So I just put them back when I see icons out of place (usually the next time I launch something) and they stay there until the next major upgrade bumps them back to the end of the list.
The big difference is that Launchpad is a full-screen launcher that lets you position icons wherever you want them, similar to the launch screen on an iOS device.
Putting the Application folder in the Dock will present all of your apps, but you can’t customize the sequence. They are going to appear sorted by your configured option for its Dock-folder (by name, date, kind, etc.). Which might be fine for the way you work.
For me, I like to put my most-frequently used apps on the top row. Less-frequently-used apps on the next row. And put everything else in folders. Which you can’t really do with the Applications folder unless you start renaming and moving the contents, which may end up creating other problems.
I remember years ago reading about some apps whose installations were so fragile that they would misbehave or fail to launch if they were renamed or moved to an unexpected location. This is undoubtedly bad app design, but if it’s an app you need to use, there’s not a lot you’ll be able to do about it. So I prefer to leave everything in the Applications folder wherever the installers choose to put them and use the Launchpad for my personal organization.
If sort order is the only issue, you can always use a folder of aliases and change the alias names to get the order you want. A space will always put an item ahead, while (opt-shift-k) will always put an item behind.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Do You Use It? Spotlight on the Mac
I hadn’t thought of using Launchpad in that manner. I might try it. Thanks.
Sure. But how much manual alias-creation/grouping are you going to be willing to do before you realize that you can just use the facility Apple is providing for free and not worry about maintaining your own mechanism?
Sure, but then you have to deal with the iOS manner of grouping and organizing apps within Launchpad. There’s no free lunch. Unless you have only stock apps or you don’t care about how they’re presented, you’re going to have to put in the work somewhere. The question is just how you choose to do that. To many who have been on Mac since way back when, chances are, using regular folders and aliases comes a lot more natural than learning the iOS way of organization on springboard which is the metaphor Launchpad uses.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Do You Use It? Stage Manager on the Mac
I use LaunchPad, always with the shortcut ^ SHIFT Up Arrow
If only I knew what keys to use to show Control-Shift-Up Arrow…
Yep, that’s what I do for apps that aren’t in the dock, which is embarrassingly full already. My launchpad opens on my 27" iMac with huge icons, so there are several pages to look at. Not being quite that much visually challenged, I might find it more useful if the icons were the same size as on my phone, then they’d all go on one page. There may be a way of fixing this, but I am not strongly motivated to find it.
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I miss it too, but found that Dock shelf and Quicksilver cover most of the functionality I used.
I miss it too. Closest I have found is a Keyboard Maestro palette for some of the most used custom commands.
Last year I bumped into the multi-touch swipe to launch LaunchPad, thinking to myself, that was easier than I remember…I must use that…
…I haven’t
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Same. Alfred is incredible for so many things.
The only time I ever open Launchpad is on those weird occasions when I am looking for an app I have installed and can’t remember the name of.
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This article has made me revisit using Launchpad. I use a Magic Trackpad and the “squeeze” gesture is quick and intuitive. Thanks @ace for this great idea of tracking the utility of native apps!
Well somehow I messed this up. The 10 x 7 terminal command worked, but the bottom third of the screen is empty; there’s still multiple pages of apps. So, just smaller icons, really. I can drag icons to fill, but that’s…a drag 
When I tried to reset back (per Ask Different) now I have only 4 icons and a dozen or more pages. How do I get back to the default?!