macOS Tahoe removed Launchpad folders — how to organize apps now?

Launchpad is not available in macOS 26 Tahoe. Instead, Apple has replaced it with a Spotlight-based application library similar to that on iOS. We are users like you and no one here can speak to what Apple will or will not do in future updates.

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A possible workaround might be the AppGrid Launcher app (Mac App Store link).

Try the free Launchie as an alternative.

Came across these commands and revert back to old Launchpad. Anyone tried?

To bring back old LaunchPad:

1. sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain
2. sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/SpotlightUI.plist SpotlightPlus -dict Enabled -bool false
3. Restart

To revert:

1. sudo rm /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/SpotlightUI.plist
2. Restart

Not sure that it will do much good, but I've shared my frustration and suggested brining LP back until they can allow us to customize grouping labels and the apps within them. I'm trying an app called Launchie on one machine and rolling the rest back.

Not sure that it will do much good, but I've shared my frustration and suggested brining LP back until they can allow us to customize grouping labels and the apps within them. I'm trying an app called Launchie on one machine and rolling the rest back. If anyone has a good third party app suggestion I'd love to hear it.

Also holding off on picking up a MacStudio for my business - the ThinkCentre and Beelink GTR9 Pro are looking better by the day.

I had the same issue, but after letting my mac "think about it for a while" it started coming up with useful groupings. Not the same groupings I had under launchpad, but they are livable. I suspect they will get better over time.

at first, it put things like xcode and terminal in the financial and productivity group, which had me going nuts. Then, after a while, xcode and most of my development tools migrated to developer tools. (it missed a few that I would like to include in that group, like Thonny and Cot editor.)

Removing ability to customize the launch pad/homescreen like on iPad and iPhone and force only an alphabetic list or the Dev guys warped sort in Apple groupings is very inefficient. I used to have one row as all MS Office Apps, another as truly apple utilities - not what the Dev guy thinks are utilities - notes is not a utility. If you need a LOGICAL sort of apps because you have many on your MAC, avoid upgrading to MAC OS 26. I have been on apple since about 2010, had I known this downgrade in functionality was coming, I would have not upgraded my MacBook in Feb and instead bought a 16" Windows as there you can create folders to sort apps in a logical format that makes sense to the user, but soon enough folks will not like this and hopefully someone will write an app to fix this. There are posts in dev channels as how to try to reinstate the ability to sort your apps so you can have Word, Excel, PPT, Notes together and then all the video type apps together, then desktop apps together unlike the cluster of a sort that appears on the last page of your iPhone. Frankly that would kill having iPhones and iPad for me. I would go back to android if I couldn't sort and display my home pages the way I want them.

A comparable rant, but with some work-around here:

https://www.macobserver.com/news/launchpad-is-gone-in-macos-26-and-users-hate-the-replacement/

And the worst part is the Spotlight Search doesn't work all the time. I have apps that I can clearly see in the list. However, the moment I typed in the name (just a few couple characters), it will display "Not found".

The issue comes and goes.

The Spotlight is getting worse in the last couple releases of macOS in my experience.

And the workaround I have (since the LaunchPad is replaced with broken Spotlight), I need to use Finder to locate the app and open from there.

Not a fan - lost customization. It's like a maximumist came into my home office and dumped all my folders and files onto the desk like a game of 52 card pickup...though in alphabetical order...looking for a third party app to put order to this chaos.

Completely agree and it is time for 3rd party app to shine. I posted a link for a decent 3rd party app and it was free. But my post got removed each time. So, good luck with you guys. macOS 26 didn't really change the look and feel much except make things worse in some areas.

Jobs used to say customers don't know what they want until they are shown. And this is one of those "not this time" experiences.

>App Store>

From what I've read, this worked in the Beta version of Tahoe, but no longer works in the final release.