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Launchpad gets screwed up after every restart

S

s2mike

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Sep 14, 2015
2,417
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I tried searching, but didn’t see much on this...

Every single time my iMac restarts, the Launchpad app arrangement gets all screwy and jumbled up. It’s not the end of the world, since I can just open Terminal and type a command and it resets the Launchpad back to the default arrangement...but I’m getting tired of dealing with this after every restart.

This has been happening on 10.15 as well as 10.15.1 - anyone have any insight into how to prevent this from happening?

Thanks.
 
casperes1996 said:
In what way does the arrangement get messed up? Suppose you could add that command to run automatically on boot
Click to expand...

Basically, it rearranges the apps and takes apps out of folders and just jumbles everything up. Really obnoxious.
 
Same, even a reinstall hasn’t fixed the issue. I have seen this behavior on my MBP 2015 and 2019
 
I’ve had issues similar to that in the early beta builds of Catalina, but haven’t had any issues with it in 10.15.1. As said above, maybe set the command to run on boot?
 
Today I shutdown the Mac and the launchpad remained in good shape. Hopefully the problem stops, but I fear that a restart may trigger it again. We’ll see...currently having much bigger problems with Catalina to worry about.
 
Any updates on this? I am having the same problem. Seems like it does it after every other restart. I run the terminal command to reset everything, and then 2 days later (2 restarts later) it is back to how I dont want it. Does this on a 2015 imac and a 2018 mbp both with catalina. Tried chatting with Apple support but they were not helpful.
 
I have a 2012 Mac mini sever running the latest version of Catalina and it does it my machine, its a real pain.
Have informed Apple months ago, sent screen shots but I presume not one of their priorities at the moment as iOS 13 is such a horrendous mess bit like Catalina.
 
Still happening for me also. I run the terminal command like you about every other day. And Reminders won't remember that I set it to sort by the due date but it resets to manual. And Maps cant locate me–so weather and location-based Siri questions won't work. And the calendar reminder that alerts when it is time to leave for appointments likewise won't work since it doesn't have location info. Again location based, nightshift and switch to dark mode auto won't work.

And if iTunes (I can't call it Music, been an Apple user since 2003) is selected to stream music from iTunes on my mac to my apple tv it disables my screensaver. My screensaver is set to one minute, but if i stream it will never come on.

The last time I tried to chat with Apple, the rep was nice but just didnt seem to know what to do. Eventually, I was told that if I wanted to give bug reports that could guarantee they would get read, then I should join the dev program and install the betas and report from the beta program.

My response: "So you want me to install a beta OS so I can report bugs in the released OSes?" I didn't know how to respond to that other than a simple no thank you.
 
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Yes it’s a buggy OS, like yourself I’ve been a long-standing user of Apple Software and products since the early 2000s so it’s quite annoying to see what rubbish they are releasing to the public these days, its like Apple are becoming the new Microsoft of the early/mid 2000 when Steve Ballmer was the CEO.
 
This happens if you immediately try to rearrange the LP icons. My work around which works for me every time is to boot and let LP auto arrange the icons however it wants. I wait 2 days i.e. 2 reboots then rearrange the LP icons how I want them. They stay that way permanently.

It's definitely a Catalina bug.
 
This has been happening to me on a new 2020 Air I just got today. After some frustration I did a clean install on it, after doing the clean install the issue still happens. I still haven't found a way to fix it.
 
tonywalker23 said:
I can verify that post #11 has worked for me on a 2015 iMac.
Click to expand...

I tried this method this morning. I rebooted once, let the icons rearrange, then I manually moved everything that was outside of the "other" folder and put them back where they should be. I've rebooted 3 additional times and so far things have stuck. Will provide an update in a week if this seems to work better over than using the terminal command to rearrange icons.

Update a few hours later and several reboots later... this seemed to fix it. Very weird bug.
 
Last edited:
Man, I finally got rid of my 2012 iMac and picked up a brand new M1 MacBook Air.

I was utterly shocked when I rebooted and experienced this same ridiculous issue. This machine shipped with Big Sur, so I guess it's not just a Catalina bug. Ugh.

If it happens again, I'll try the technique outlined in post #11. Woof.
 
This did happen to me on Catalina, but not during the Big Sur beta and didn't happen after upgrading to Big Sur final.
Due to some bugs I had to reinstall Big Sur from the scratch and here we go again -.-
 
Finally found the solution.
1. Reset the Launchpad in the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true
killall Dock
2. Take print screens of the launchpad and the folder <Others>)
3. Reboot
4. Let the Launchpad to rearrange as it is. Don't do any arrangement
5. Wait for couple of days.
6. Reboot twice
7. If you see some apps are missing in Launchpad, drag them to Launchpad from Apps (in the Finder call the list of app: shift+command+A)
8. Reboot once
7. Check whether missing apps appeared in the Launchpad
8. Reboot once more time
9. Check whether the Launchpad stays as it was before.
8. Now rearrange Launchpad as you wish and you save to reboot as much as you needed.

This worked for me and now stays solid. I have to reboot on daily basis due to Bloomberg terminal under bootcamp partition, so no issues at all.

I did follow as advised per post #11, but having waited 2 days and rebooted, the Launchpad rearranged again where one disappeared. So:
1. I waited for another 1 day.
2. Rebooted, checked and found out that the Launchpad stayed in the same order as it reboot a day ago.
3. Dragged missing app to the Launchpad
4. Rebooted. Missing app appeared.
5. Rearranged the Launchpad up to my wishes.
6. Rebooted. Voila, now the Launchpad is rock solid, considering the fact the MacBook should rebooted on daily basis.
 
This bug is still present in Big Sur 11.1.
All you have to do is moving the icons manually, then it will stay that way.
 
RigSatMe said:
Finally found the solution.
1. Reset the Launchpad in the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true
killall Dock
2. Take print screens of the launchpad and the folder <Others>)
3. Reboot
4. Let the Launchpad to rearrange as it is. Don't do any arrangement
5. Wait for couple of days.
6. Reboot twice
7. If you see some apps are missing in Launchpad, drag them to Launchpad from Apps (in the Finder call the list of app: shift+command+A)
8. Reboot once
7. Check whether missing apps appeared in the Launchpad
8. Reboot once more time
9. Check whether the Launchpad stays as it was before.
8. Now rearrange Launchpad as you wish and you save to reboot as much as you needed.

This worked for me and now stays solid. I have to reboot on daily basis due to Bloomberg terminal under bootcamp partition, so no issues at all.

I did follow as advised per post #11, but having waited 2 days and rebooted, the Launchpad rearranged again where one disappeared. So:
1. I waited for another 1 day.
2. Rebooted, checked and found out that the Launchpad stayed in the same order as it reboot a day ago.
3. Dragged missing app to the Launchpad
4. Rebooted. Missing app appeared.
5. Rearranged the Launchpad up to my wishes.
6. Rebooted. Voila, now the Launchpad is rock solid, considering the fact the MacBook should rebooted on daily basis.
Click to expand...
This is ridiculous. Apple needs to fix this. Good grief.
 
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