gjt1234 wrote:
Why is this happening
It's a poor design by Apple.
why doesn't it appear in the default view
See above.
it appears when searching for 'Fo'?
That's how the Spotlight app lookup has traditionally worked. This new design takes the worst elements of LaunchPad and Spotlight and combines them.
It is installed in /Users/<uname>/Applications/ and not in /Applications/ but other apps installed there do show up in Apps.
That at least doesn't matter. Apps can be installed on any visible volume.
Failing that, is there a way to revert to Launchpad so I don't have to search every time I want to run it?
No. Launchpad is gone. You can either settle for the new design, use a 3rd party "launcher" app, or cobble up your own solution with aliases or symbolic links.
This is really a problem of Apple's own design. Apple has a pretty reliable pattern of development. They'll roll out some fancy new app or feature that's maybe 75% complete. And then they just drop it. Two years later, they'll re-do the entire thing with some new version that's usually a bit worse.
LaunchPad was always difficult to configure. It didn't share its configuration over iCloud. And tended to forget its configuration on a regular basis. Lots of people used or, or tried to use it, but it just wasn't ever all the way there. Personally, I tended to use the old Spotlight a bit more than Launchpad. But sometimes I would use Launchpad on purpose when Spotlight would go insane and I couldn't search. Launchpad had its own search feature that would still work when Spotlight was broken. But now we have this new tool that not as good as either the old Launchpad or the old Spotlight.
Apple will most likely re-do it all again in a couple of years. It will probably be even more like iOS next time. I would prefer that Apple stop this drop-by-drip water torture and just discontinue macOS entirely. We all know where they're going. Just get there already!
