Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26 (opens in new tab)

I'm sorry, I thought this would be fun at first, but now it seems not to be, and it does cause confusion. I will rewrite it. My technical skills are not good when it comes to code and technology, far from good. But I will try to make sure all functions are tested and will not cause more problems. I'm still a student, I know I shouldn't use this as an excuse, but my only hope is that many Mac users who can't adapt to the new Launchpad will have more alternatives and more choices.Until Apple bring Launchpad back( if possible)

The thing called Launchpad was removed, but its shortcuts still exist and take you into Spotlight's (new) applications panel. This gives you the searchable-list-of-apps that Launchpad offered, though it doesn't let you rearrange them... so depending on how you personally liked to use Launchpad it'll either be a perfect substitute or incredibly frustrating for you.

I’m really surprised so many people miss it. It’s the slowest way to find an app. Command+Space and type a character or two and boom app is launching.

If you search, there’s a defaults command to bring it back. Haven’t installed 26, but I saw this somewhere if you’re like me and rely on LP to group apps whose names you won’t remember.

I almost always use spotlight to launch apps. The rare occasions when I’ve used launchpad are when I momentarily forget an app’s name.

I'm also used to Spotlight. One of the reasons is because I also use KDE and krunner has the same keybinding and almost the same functionality. But I still liked Launchpad (just like the app dashboard in KDE) as it shows me visually what I have installed.

Why? Well, there are some apps I have installed and forgotten, for example, I have several 3D printer slicers, but normally I only use one. I grouped them into a folder, so I could check what I have installed if I wanted to switch for whatever reason. I also had a folder called "useless", where I place everything that I don't used but I can't remove (Apple stuff, Safari extensions, bloat installed with LaTeX, and so on).

The new "apps" can't be organized. Everything is just thrown there, only sorted alphabetically. There's no reason for me to use that, if I remember what I want I can just type in Spotlight

PS: It's possible to bring back Launchpad in Tahoe through the command line. I only didn't that yet because I don't know how safe it is to do that.

Thank you for the reply, So in the current version, you can set the number of rows and columns, and you can also hide the software (not displayed in the launcher) and hide the title of the software. I checked the comments section, and it seems there are still quite a few performance issues... I'm not sure if this is an isolated incident or a common occurrence. I'll look into it.

Do you mean when you first open the software, or when you go to other pages? It does feel sluggish when you first open it. Also the RAM usage is not that good. I hope I can do some optimization on it.

How does your m1 run Tahoe overall? I haven’t updated because I fear it might have degraded performance?

You are absolutely right,(I am not Claude) the bottom part of the readme looks not that good. I will try to rewrite. :)

There's more than the README that is generated.