Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26(github.com)

51 points by roversx 260 days ago | 30 comments

An open sourced version of Launchpad that I enhanced, you can import from old system Launchpad (just one click), and most of things look same. There are also a lot of functions, like adjust / display / hide icon size and title, localize icons, game controller support, i18n, voice over, etc.

Still updating, open an issue if there are any problems. Hope this could help if someone updated to MacOS26 and not happy with new Launchpad :)

Thank you.

unsnap_biceps 260 days ago |

> note that most of the README below are generated by Claude AI, haven't look into it, some information maynot be accurate. but for claude, you are absolutely right!

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here, but if you don't even stand behind your own readme, I struggle to trust your code.

roversx 260 days ago | |

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)

phatskat 260 days ago |

I’m curious to see a Swift developer’s opinion of the codebase - I have no means personally to judge the merits of this code, and I’m skeptical of the AI of it all.

SkyeCA 260 days ago |

I wasn't even aware Launchpad was removed in the newest version of Mac OS. It's very rare I'm upset to learn about a change, but I use Launchpad a lot so I'm glad people are working on alternatives.

kemayo 260 days ago | |

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.

SkyeCA 258 days ago | | |

Incredibly frustrating seems to be the answer unfortunately. I loved Launchpad, but I'm also one of those weirdos who loved the Windows 8 full screen start menu.

whalesalad 260 days ago | |

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.

alsetmusic 260 days ago | |

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.

fleeno 260 days ago |

One easy thing I've been doing for years is just dropping the Applications directory onto my dock. Instant launcher. Otherwise I just use spotlight if I want to launch by typing.

dhosek 260 days ago | |

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.

philo23 260 days ago |

I can't say I miss Launchpad all that much, but I guess its nice to have a replacement for people who do. I've always used Spotlight via Cmd + Space to launch stuff.

The two things I always wished you could do in the old Launchpad (and would have made me hate it a lot less) are:

Configuring the size of the icon grid. Just give me the option to make it denser, the defaults were silly on external displays.

and the other is being able to completely exclude the nonsense apps like the 6 different Adobe Creative Cloud icons that would end up in there. Though it'd also be nice if Adobe didn't spew them all over the place in the first place...

lucasoshiro 260 days ago | |

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.

roversx 260 days ago | |

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.

oidar 260 days ago |

I was hopeful, but it's not quite there yet. It's really, really slow on my M1 with Tahoe.

roversx 260 days ago | |

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.

oidar 260 days ago | | |

Swiping between pages is hit or miss. Its like it doesn't hook on the swipe. The search is really, really slow. I do have hundreds of "apps" on my machine, but it's still much slower than the native app navigator. Moving around apps to group them or rearrange them is probably the slowest part. I turned on dev fps monitor and it's showing 50fps.

rafark 260 days ago | |

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

oidar 260 days ago | | |

Overall, it's been fine. (M1 Max 32GB) There are lots of bugs in apple's apps and a few bugs in other apps. I probably wouldn't have upgraded if I didn't need the new Xcode (which has been buggy). I can't think of one new feature that would make we stay on Tahoe if I didn't need the new Xcode. I would hold off for a .1 unless you really wanted it.

One mistake I did make when upgrading was not updating little snitch, and I couldn't get any network connection for a bit until I reinstalled that app via USB.

alsetmusic 260 days ago |

Fails to build for me on 14.8. Not sure if the bit about not being able to open folders was indicative of building on 26 and copying to another Mac and this is expected. I won't be updating to 26 any time soon, but I still wanted to check it out.

ewxyz 260 days ago |

I have to admit: these LLM-generated READMEs look terrible.

roversx 260 days ago | |

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

hbbio 260 days ago | |

There's more than the README that is generated.

ewxyz 260 days ago | | |

Yes, which completely undermines my trust and confidence in such a project.