Launchpad Is Gone in macOS Tahoe: What to Use Instead

Launchpad is gone. After fourteen years, macOS 26 Tahoe ships without it: no rocket icon in the Dock, no setting to bring it back, and no supported way to restore the original. If you upgraded and went looking for the full-screen grid of app icons, it is not hidden. It has been removed.

This is a real change in how you open apps, and the replacement is not a like-for-like swap. Here is what Apple actually replaced it with, and the practical options if the new arrangement does not suit you.

What replaced Launchpad

Apple folded the app grid into Spotlight. Press Command and Space to open Spotlight, then press Command and 1 to switch to the Applications view. You get every installed app, which you can browse by name or by category, shown as icons or as a list.

It covers most of what Launchpad did. Two things it does not do:

• You cannot rearrange it. Launchpad let you drag icons into whatever order you wanted and group them into folders. The Applications view sorts by name or category and that is the whole of it.
• It is a mode inside Spotlight, not a place. You open Spotlight, then switch views. If your muscle memory was a single gesture to a fixed screen, that is now two steps.

If you mainly used Launchpad as a searchable list, the new Applications view is a fair replacement and arguably a faster one. If you used it as a visual, spatial layout where a given app always sat in the same place, that is the part Apple took away.

Option 1: Learn the Spotlight shortcut

The cheapest option is to accept the change. Command and Space, then Command and 1. If you mostly type an app name and press Return, Spotlight was already faster than Launchpad and nothing you relied on has been lost.

Worth doing either way, because it is built in and always available.

Option 2: Put the Applications folder in your Dock

Open Finder, find the Applications folder in the sidebar, and drag it to the right-hand side of your Dock, past the separator near the Trash. Control-click the stack it creates and you get three settings worth changing: Sort by Name, Display as Folder rather than Stack so the icon stays recognisable, and View content as Grid, which is the closest thing to the old layout.

This gets you nearest to the Launchpad feel with no third-party software at all. Two trade-offs. It lives in the Dock, so it is one click away only while the Dock is visible, which is awkward if you have hidden the Dock. And it sorts alphabetically rather than however you prefer, so a fifty-app library still means scanning.

Option 3: Shift, Command and A in Finder

From any Finder window, Shift plus Command plus A jumps straight to the Applications folder. Not a launcher so much as a fast route to the folder, but it is worth knowing when you are already in Finder.

Option 4: A menu bar launcher

The gap Apple left is the one thing all three options above share: none of them let you decide what goes where. This is where a dedicated launcher earns its place, and it is what ShortcutDock does.

ShortcutDock puts a small icon in your menu bar. Click it, or press a global keyboard shortcut you choose, and a panel drops down with your apps in a grid. You pick which apps appear, you arrange them, and you can put them into groups such as Browsers, Design or Developer, then launch a whole group at once.

Two honest caveats, because this is the part most articles on this subject skip:

• It is not a Launchpad clone. Launchpad took over the whole screen. ShortcutDock is a panel that drops from the menu bar. If what you miss specifically is the full-screen takeover, this is a different thing and you should know that before installing it.
• It is curated, not exhaustive. ShortcutDock shows the apps you choose, not everything on the disk. That is the point, but the free version holds eight app shortcuts, five favourites and one group. If you want your whole library in there, that needs Pro, which is a one-time payment rather than a subscription.

If you want a fixed, visual, always-in-the-same-place grid of the apps you actually use, and you would rather that lived in the menu bar than take over your display, that is the case for it. If you want every app on your Mac in one alphabetical list, Spotlight's Applications view already does that and costs nothing.

Does ShortcutDock run on macOS Tahoe?

Yes. ShortcutDock requires macOS 13 Ventura or later, which includes macOS 26 Tahoe, and it runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. You can download it for Mac and try the free version before deciding.

Can you bring Launchpad back with a Terminal command?

No. The commands circulating in forums are recycled from older versions of macOS, where Launchpad still existed and its database occasionally needed resetting. The usual one is defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock. On Tahoe that rebuilds nothing, because there is no Launchpad process left for the Dock to restart. It is harmless, and it also does nothing.

Be wary of anything that goes further than a defaults command. Advice that involves disabling System Integrity Protection, or copying a Launchpad binary out of an older macOS installer, asks you to weaken the protections that keep your Mac safe in exchange for an app that will not work properly against a system it was never built for. That is a bad trade for a launcher.

Which to choose

• You typed app names into Launchpad: use Spotlight. Command and Space, then start typing. You have lost nothing.
• You browsed Launchpad visually and want everything: Spotlight's Applications view, Command and Space then Command and 1.
• You want the Applications folder one click away: drag it into the Dock as a grid stack.
• You want your own arrangement, your own groups, and no full-screen interruption: a menu bar launcher.

Whichever you pick, the one thing not on the table is getting the original Launchpad back. Better to settle on a replacement you actually like than to keep chasing the old one, and the sooner you rebuild the habit around something else, the sooner it stops feeling like a loss.

If you are rethinking your setup anyway, it is a reasonable moment to ask whether you still need the Dock at all. We wrote about hiding the Mac Dock completely, and about how the main Mac launchers compare.