How do I restore the old Launchpad in macOS Tahoe

What Apple is trying to do is merge MacOS with iOS/iPadOS functionality as we move forward. I get that. Fine. Make that the default if you like. But why not simply include "Use Launch Pad" as an option in settings?

I find this comment rather ironic… you at once mention Apple “merging” their OS in the context of removing from macOS something that is central to the user interface of iOS and iPadOS… talk about “unmerging”?

I truly don't understand the level of hatred - or at least, disdain - here.

Old:

• Launch Launchpad
• Get a list of apps
• Scroll horizontally through pages of apps to find the one you want
• Click it.

New:

• Launch Apps
• Get a list of apps
• Scroll vertically through a list of apps to find the one you want
• Click it

In both cases (from what I remember), you can type after launching LaunchPad/Apps to shorten the list to matching app names.

At face value, the difference seems to be LaunchPad was fullscreen whereas apps is window-based.

As far as differences:

Apps lists the most-used apps first in their own section. Kind of handy for those that focus on a handful of apps (likely most users). I don't recall if Launchpad did this.

Apps uses categories to create sub-groups of apps (handy for those with many different apps/use cases.

Other than look and feel (and there have been wars waged for decades as each new OS version tweaks the UI) I'm completely unclear as to what actual functionality existed in LaunchPad that isn't available, or at least have some equivalence in Apps.

Oh, and:

> Apple's categories are often inaccurate

Contrary to what you might expect, these are not Apple's categories.

Developers are free (and encouraged? required?) to provide category data when they submit their app to the App Store, so if Widgets.app is in the 'Games' category, that is because the developer says it should be there, not Apple.

Camelot wrote:

I truly don't understand the level of hatred - or at least, disdain - here.

I comfort myself by assuming these people's lives are so untroubled that this is the thing they have to worry about.

Nobody ever forced us to use Launchpad, but taking it away after making it a central piece of organizing one's desktop is incredibly jarring to the GUI experience for those of us who actually used it effectively.

Conversely, I don't understand why we are being forced to use spotlight, which was also present in previous versions of the OS. Spotlight was always useful as a search tool, but organizing apps is not a matter of searching, it is a matter of arranging tools in a logical place for a workflow. I can't understand how apple fails to grasp this basic difference in cognitive functions and conflate their purpose with a single inadequate tool.

m010726 wrote:

Nobody ever forced us to use Launchpad, but taking it away after making it a central piece of organizing one's desktop is incredibly jarring to the GUI experience for those of us who actually used it effectively.

Nobody is forcing you to try to justify it’s legitimacy to a bunch of people who couldn’t care less and have no way to bring it back to you.

Conversely, I don't understand why we are being forced to use spotlight,

Once again, nobody is forcing you to use Spotlight. You can open apps any of the normal ways of doing so which have existed for at least 25 years. I think the Applications folder may go all the way back to 1984, but I’m old and forget those details.

I can't understand how apple fails to grasp this basic difference in cognitive functions and conflate their purpose with a single inadequate tool.

I can’t grasp why you think we would know why Apple does anything.

Well, macOS Tahoe is the worst update.

1. It eats up my system RAM like crazy... No applications are open, the System is at idle, and out of 36GB, 20GB is being used, like not a single application, even nothing in the background, and it’s been almost a month since I updated my computer
2. And removing the launchpad was the biggest downgrade Apple had done. Like the new apps thing, I can't even sort my apps; Apple algorithms are sorting them. Even I can't resize it, and it doesn’t even remember the last size that I set.
3. Now the animations sometimes lag a lot. Even the landscape wallpapers they lag.
4. The overall system runs hot.

Just for reference, I am using a Macbook Pro with 36GB RAM (M3 Pro with 14-core CPU). Lastly, a question: can someone help me out? Is there a way I can downgrade back from Tahoe just like we can do on the Intel MacBook Pro 16 2019?

[Edited by Moderator]

Exactly—100% agree. I’d add that if they want to remove the Launchpad, fine, but at least let us organize the categories ourselves. How are people who need to use many dozens of apps everyday supposed to work?

I am very disappointed by this "enhancement".

I have 99 apps on my MacBook, and I had categorised them nicely into the pages in the Launcher (iPhone has pages and one can group the apps there).

I have multiple apps for editing videos, photos, record and arrange music, etc. Can't remember all their names by heart.

Guess I'll be going back to Windows soon...

I predict they bring it back. Don’t listen to the people here. They don’t care, only because they obviously didn’t use it. Replacing it didn’t make logical sense—in any way. Apple will figure it out.

I completely agree with your point of view. There are some applications that are not frequently used but still need to be accessed occasionally. I can definitely put them in a separate folder. And I don't need to remember their names. As long as I find this folder of seldom-used applications, I can recall what they are for.

They've gone completely mad. I use lots of apps and often can't remember all their names. I had organised them all by workflow, but now it takes me ages to find them.

I want to decide how to organise them into groups, not Apple, who don't even know how I work. It's totally absurd.

DisonL wrote:

I completely agree with your point of view. There are some applications that are not frequently used but still need to be accessed occasionally. I can definitely put them in a separate folder. And I don't need to remember their names. As long as I find this folder of seldom-used applications, I can recall what they are for.

What's stopping you from doing that? You can do it in the Applications folder. Or, you can create a folder and put aliases in it of whatever apps you want and add that to Dock.

medialp wrote:

I want to decide how to organise them into groups, not Apple, who don't even know how I work. It's totally absurd.

So go ahead and put your applications in whatever subfolders you want in the Applications folder (put aliases in a folder). Nothing is stopping you.

muis - i had Launchpad in the left bottom-corner with MissionControl, one of the last inventions of the late Steve Jobs. (Isn't is amazing..?)

And it was a single mouse- or trackpad sweep, for my 5 most needed apps that were a bit lost in the Dock. Calculator, Home and a test-app, on all my machines ( its a Hard way to get all them Docks look the same, without Terminal)

[Edited by Moderator]

Interesting what things people ascribe to Steve Jobs, or not.

The iPhone was introduced in 2007, and Launchpad was introduced on the Mac in OS X Lion, in 2011, when Steve Jobs was already terminally ill. Mission Control was also introduced in 2011, but was a natural evolution of Exposé, which had been introduced in 2003. I very much doubt that Steve Jobs had much to do with it, and it certainly was not "invented" by him. Apple has a huge team, and while Steve in his day had the final word on what went forward or not, it is oversimplistic to say he "invented" either of the two.