Here’s How To Replace Launchpad

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you what I think is the best way to replace Launchpad on your Mac. 

Now previously I talked about how macOS Tahoe got rid of Launchpad and replaced it with a special section in Spotlight that lets you easily launch apps, especially if you used the keyboard to launch Spotlight and then search for the app. Well, a lot of people really missed Launchpad. Now, it seems that what people missed the most are two things. One is the ability to organize their apps into folders so they know where to find them. Two is the ability to easily launch apps using the mouse or trackpad, not the keyboard. 

Now there are a variety of ways to replace that functionality in macOS Tahoe and beyond. But I think there is one that stands out as the best way to use your mouse and trackpad to launch apps and also organize your apps. That's to put a special folder in the Dock. So in this video I'm going to concentrate on only that one solution, not the many others. 

So, step one is to create a special folder that will allow you to organize your apps into subfolders. I think the best place for this is in your Home Folder on your Mac. So, in the Finder use Go and then Home. Go to your Home folder. This is a good place for this. I'm going to use File and then New Folder and create a folder here and I'm going to call it Launchpad after the previous functionality. Then I'm going to dive down into Launchpad. Now there is nothing in here to begin with, of course, so what you're going to do is add folders just like you would have had before in Launchpad. So, for instance, I'm going create a new folder here and I'm going to call this one Productivity. That will be for all my productivity apps. I'm going to create another one. I'll use the keyboard shortcut this time, Shift Command N, and I'll call this one Office, for office apps. I'll do another one for games and I'll fill it out with whatever folders I want. I don't have to think of them all now. I can easily add some more later on. 

I'll start with this set of seven folders. I'll organize my apps into these folders. I want to open a second Finder window and I'm going to go to my Applications folder here. So I can see all of my Applications. I'll move this a little to the side here so I can see these folders here in this special Launchpad folder I created. Now I'm going to go through this list and I'm going to add any apps that I want to these folders here. So what I'm actually doing when I click and drag is I'm creating an alias to the actual application. Notice the little curved arrow that appears there with the icon. That's because when you drag from the Applications Folder the Finder is smart enough to know you don't actually want to move the application out of the Application Folder. You just want to create an alias to it. So you don't need to hold any special keys down to make an alias with applications. Just drag and drop will do it. 

Now I'm going to go and continue to do that and drag the different applications I want to these folders. This is one of the big advantages of this technique over how Launchpad worked previously. Launchpad had every app in it whether you wanted it there or not. So Users were forced to actually put apps they didn't want to see on like the last page or create a folder and Hide them all in there. So now I've gone through my whole list of applications and I've added ones that I wanted to these folders here. I can always go back and add more later. This is just to get me started. I can look in each of these folders and see what I've added. I'm going to select All, Command A, and then use Command Right Arrow and it will open them all up. 

So now I can easily see what's in each one of these folders. They are all just aliases to different apps. 

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Now let's go up a level. I'm going to use Command, click on the title here, and go back to my Home folder and there's that Launchpad Folder. To add it to the Dock all I need to do is Drag & Drop it to the right side of the Dock. It's got to be  the side near the trashcan there. I'm going to drop it right here. Now I'm going to customize it by Control Clicking, right clicking, or two-finger clicking on the trackpad and I'm going to select Display As Folder. Then I'm also going to select View Content As Grid. Now I'm ready to use it. 

You'll find, right away, that it works in a similar way to how Launchpad worked. I click on it and I get this Grid showing me all these folders. If I want to launch an app, say, in the Office folder here I just click on the Office Folder and I see the aliases to those apps here. If I want to launch one I just click on that app and it launches. Another advantage over how Launchpad worked is, notice everything is in alphabetical order. If you Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on the icon here you see you can do Sort By. The only one that really makes sense in this case is Sort By Name. So it is automatically going to sort these folders by name and then each folder is then going to sort all of the apps by name as well. 

That was probably the most common request I got about Launchpad in the past. How do I get everything to be in alphabetical order. Now this could be a disadvantage if, in fact, you don't want them in alphabetical order. But you could always change the names of the aliases to change the order. So, for instance, if I go down here to Office, notice that the app is called Microsoft Word. But I can change the alias name to Word dot app. Microsoft Word is still the name of the app. The alias just has a different name now. That will be reflected when I go to it here. So technically I can actually name things with numbers at the front, like that and that, and put them in the order that I want based on those numbers. 

Now another thing you can do is you can add apps to the top level here. These don't have to be all folders. That's kind of like how Launchpad worked too. Right? So, I can drag Safari here to this top level with the folder. Maybe also add another app to it. Let's add News. Maybe let's add Music here to the top level as well. Now you'll see when you use this Special Folder here you've got these apps here ready to access at a top level and then all of your folders here that you can dig down into to see the contents of. 

Here's another way that this actually has an advantage over how Launchpad worked. Launchpad was just for Apps. But this you can add files to. So let's say you have a very important file that you also want to put in this list. You can Drag & Drop that to it. Now, you're going to want to hold down Option and Command so that you're creating an alias to the file. You don't want to move the actual file. You want that to stay exactly where it was, in this case my Documents folder, Daily Reports. There's the file. But now there is an alias to it here. Now when I click on this folder here in the Dock I'll see all the apps, all the folders with all the apps, but also this document is here. I can click on that and it will launch the app and open the document. 

So if you want to purely keep this as just for apps you don't have to use that. But if you do want to put some documents in here as well you can. It even works for folders. If I take this folder and I move it here but I'm going to hold Option and Command down so that I create an alias to the folder. Very important you remember to do that. Then, you'll see it here but instead of clicking and being able to go down into that folder here in this Grid it will actually just open that folder. 

Now I want to show you one variation to this some of you may like better. It's just changing the option here for the folder from Grid to List. Now when you click on it you still get all the folders and you still see the icons for the apps. But now it says Menu. You can very easily move between the folders to find what you want and select it. 

I personally prefer the List View of this. But the Grid View is closer to how Launchpad looked.  

Now there are definitely some ways in which this differs from how Launchpad works. Most notably it's not full screen and you can't organize in the same interface that you're launching things. So you're going to have to go in the Finder to that Launchpad Folder you created and organize there, not where you launch the apps from the Dock. Another disadvantage is it doesn't automatically add new apps. If you install a new app you're going to have to go and add an alias to that app in one of those folders so that it appears there. With Launchpad, of course, a new app would just appear in Launchpad. Another disadvantage is it doesn't work with the keyboard, like Launchpad did. But chances are if you want to use the keyboard to launch an app you're just using Spotlight to do it, not this new method. 

However, you can get it to work with the keyboard if you want. You can activate the Dock using Control and F3 although you have to check in System Settings, Keyboard Shortcuts, in the Keyboard Category to see if Control F3 is actually mapped to the Dock. Then you need to either use the Arrow Keys or start typing letters to get to that folder. In this case there's nothing else in the Dock that uses the Letter L. So just typing L will get me there. Then the Up Arrow will open up the folder and you can use the Arrow Keys to get to what you want. You can use Return to go down into a folder there. Arrow Keys to get to what you want there and Return to launch it. If you really want to do it with just one keyboard shortcut you can create something in the Shortcuts App. Here I've got a JAVAscript for automation shortcut that will use System Events using the F3 with Control down here and then key strokes for L and then A just in case there was another icon there that used L. Then the Up Arrow to Start. I setup the details so it's a Quick Action in the Services Menu run with Control A. So now I can just use Control A and it will bring this up and I can navigate around and launch whatever I want with the keyboard. It's a little tricky because sometimes you run into permissions issues. But it is possible. 

One more thing. If you want this icon to look a little bit different here in the Dock you can do that. Just go to that Launchpad Folder you created. Do Command i to get Info for it and then find a graphic that you want to use. I just have a PNG file here. If I Drag & Drop this to the icon there it will update that folder and you can see it updated now in the Dock. So now I've got what looks like Launchpad sitting there in the Dock and it just accessing that folder. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.