now its completely worthless...cant see them all and they auto categorize like iOS
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
26.0 launchpad
- Thread starter Imperius*Rex
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
There's a menu in the top right of the new App launcher that gives two options. Selecting list will show all apps without the need to show more. Selecting alphabetical makes it alphabetical (weirdly this still categorizes them by letter so the list option is necessary to avoid show more on big letters). It's not the ability to organize it yourself but at least you can do alphabetical and see all apps in the same window without clicks
I've always just set up a link in the dock like this for apps. usually I just use Alfred though anyway
This is actually a bummer for me. I like having the manual layout. I set up the first "page" of LaunchPad with apps that I want to be able to access quickly, but aren't important enough to live in my dock. I bring it up with the four-finger touchpad gesture, and I have a bit of muscle memory to know where each app is on the screen.
...Probably need to get used to just using Spotlight to launch apps.
...Probably need to get used to just using Spotlight to launch apps.
I like to see all of my apps at once in custom folders. I dragged my applications to the doc and have it in grid mode for now.
this (or Alfred) has long been the simplest way to launch apps
no need to take your hands off the keyboard and search around with a pointer
just type and you're in
It's a bit different, but I am using XMenu. (Available for free from the app store.) This app allows access to folders of your choosing from a tree-view by clicking on an icon in the menu bar.
I set up a "user-defined" folder (disabling all of the others) and I am filling it with application aliases, in folders, categorized how I like. Sort of reminds me of the old Apple menu from Mac OS 9 and earlier, or the Windows Start Menu from Windows 9x.
Call me old school but I do like some apps in categories that I can navigate with a mouse, not just a giant alphabetical list.
surely someone will find a way to make it launch the /applications folder in finder, and use the big icons. that'd give you a roughly similar experience to launchpad
The benefit to launchpad is not just having big icons, it's being able to arrange, sort, and categorize the apps in the list to your liking. You can't get that by just pulling open the applications folder in finder or sticking it on the dock to use as a pop-out menu.
I may be ignorant here as I never used launchpad but can't you at least partly do this by creating folders in the application folder? With previous OSes it would just be a grid of blue folders but in MacOS 26 you could put glyphs on every folder to indicate what kinds of apps are in it.
yeah that's pretty cool. i wasn't aware of this option until i read your post, which made me discover the Customize Folder menu.
You'll learn to love this new automagik approach that does all the hard work for you.
Apparently Launchpad is still there (for now), but you have to neuter the new Spotlight UI to bring it back:
(then restart)
Code:
sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/SpotlightUI.plist SpotlightPlus -dict Enabled -bool false
Possibly. I use Homebrew casks to manage application updates though. It "probably" has a way where you could configure where exactly to drop the applications, but it is simplest just to have them all in the Applications folder where it wants to put them by default. Some other vendors (Adobe, Microsoft) have their own updaters and aren't happy if you don't keep apps where they expect.