Launchpad alternatives for macOS Tahoe: how to get the app grid back
You updated to macOS Tahoe, hit F4 out of habit, and something else appeared. Launchpad — the full-screen grid of app icons with your own pages and folders — is gone, and there is no switch to turn it back on. If you're hunting for a Launchpad alternative for macOS Tahoe, there are three honest answers: use what Apple replaced it with, rebuild a grid yourself, or drop the grid habit for something faster. Here's each one, with what it actually costs you.
What replaced Launchpad in macOS Tahoe
Apple folded app launching into the rebuilt Spotlight. The new Apps view lives in the same window as search, and there are five ways in:
- ⌘Space, then ⌘1 — Spotlight opens, then jumps to Apps.
- The F4 / Launchpad key still works. It opens the Apps view rather than the old grid, so the muscle memory survives even though the screen doesn't.
- The Apps icon in the Dock, sitting roughly where the Launchpad rocket used to be.
- A hot corner — System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Hot Corners, then assign Apps to a corner.
- The three-finger pinch on a trackpad, if you had it enabled before upgrading.
Inside, you get a suggestions row of recently used apps, then every installed app sorted by Category or Name and displayed as icons or a list. You can type to filter, arrow-key across the category chips, press Space for Quick Look, ⌘R to reveal an app in Finder, and Return to launch.
What you cannot do is the thing Launchpad was for: no custom pages, no folders, no manual arrangement. Category grouping is Apple's, not yours. If your Launchpad had a "video" page and a "work" folder, that arrangement did not come across, and there's nowhere to rebuild it.
Can you restore Launchpad itself?
No. At the user level it isn't in Tahoe at all — no app to reopen, no setting, no supported downgrade of the feature. Terminal commands that resurfaced it during the Tahoe betas don't work in the shipping release; the ones still circulating tend to disable Spotlight and the Apps view instead, which leaves you worse off than you started.
So the real question isn't how to get Launchpad back. It's which replacement fits how you actually open apps.
Launchpad alternatives for macOS Tahoe, compared
| Option | Grid with folders/pages | Keyboard-first | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spotlight's Apps view | Grid, but no folders or pages | Yes (⌘Space, ⌘1) | Built in |
| Applications folder as a Dock stack | Grid, alphabetical only | Partly | Built in |
| A folder of aliases, arranged by hand | Yes, you arrange it | No — it's a mouse target | Built in |
| AppGrid, LaunchOS, Launchie | Yes — that's the point | Varies by app | Free tiers and paid versions |
| Search launchers (Spotlight, Raycast, Alfred) | No grid at all | Yes | Free / paid |
| Let's Switch ⌥Space palette | No grid — windows and apps in one search | Yes | Free tier, $9.99 Pro |
If you genuinely want the grid — pages, folders, the layout you spent years arranging — a third-party replacement is the only faithful answer. AppGrid, LaunchOS and Launchie all rebuild a Launchpad-style launcher, and some advertise importing your old layout. Check each one's current price and requirements on its own site; this corner of the Mac utility market moved fast after Tahoe shipped and is still moving.
Rebuild a grid without installing anything
There's a native trick worth knowing, and it costs nothing:
- In Finder, make a folder — call it Apps — and drag your favourite applications into it while holding ⌥⌘. That creates aliases rather than moving anything.
- Arrange it in icon view, sorted however you like.
- Drag the folder onto the right-hand side of the Dock.
- Control-click the Dock icon and set View content as → Grid.
Click it and you get a grid of icons you curated, which is most of what Launchpad was. You can do the same with the Applications folder itself for an unfiltered, alphabetical version — no aliases required.
The catch: it's a Dock target, so it wants the mouse. Which brings us to the option that ends up being faster for most people.
Or drop the grid: type the name instead
Launchpad's grid was always a browsing tool — you looked for an icon. Once you know an app's name, typing three letters beats scanning sixty-four icons, and it beats it by a lot. That's why the built-in Apps view is a search field with a grid attached rather than the other way round.
Two settings make the typing route better than the F4 habit:
- Give the Apps view its own shortcut. System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts… → Spotlight has an entry for showing apps alongside "Show Spotlight search". Assign something you can reach one-handed and you never touch the function row.
- Bind your handful of daily apps to real hotkeys so they never go through a launcher at all. macOS won't do this natively from System Settings, but the Shortcuts app will — we walked through it in how to open an app with a keyboard shortcut on Mac.
And there's an honest observation underneath all of this: an hour into your day, almost nothing you reach for is actually closed. Mail, your browser, your editor, Slack — they're all running, often with several windows each. Opening a launcher to "launch" them is really switching dressed as launching, and it lands you on whichever window that app last had focused, which is frequently the wrong one.
That's the job Let's Switch does. ⌥⇥ flips through your open windows most-recent-first, with live previews, across every app and monitor — that part is free, permanently. Pro adds ⌥Space, a search palette that fuzzy-finds any open window by name; press it again and the same palette launches any installed app. One key for "the thing I want", whether or not it happens to be running. It's $9.99 once, no account, no subscription, up to 20 devices, and no telemetry.
If browsing icons is genuinely how you think, install a grid replacement — that's a real preference, not a bad habit. If you were using Launchpad because it was the button that was there, Tahoe's removal is a good excuse to stop reaching for a grid at all.
Frequently asked questions
Does the F4 key still do anything in macOS Tahoe? Yes. It opens the Apps view in Spotlight instead of the old full-screen grid, so the key isn't wasted.
Can I reinstall Launchpad from an older macOS? No. It isn't present in Tahoe, and the Terminal commands still floating around from the beta period tend to break Spotlight and the Apps view rather than restore anything.
Where did my Launchpad folders and pages go? They aren't in the Apps view, which only sorts by category or name. Some third-party grid apps offer to import an old Launchpad layout — worth checking before you rebuild it by hand.
Is the Apps view different from Spotlight search? Same window, different mode. ⌘1 through ⌘4 move between apps, files, actions and clipboard history; typing in any of them searches.
What's the fastest way to open an app on a Mac, really? A dedicated hotkey for the five or six apps you use constantly, and a search palette for everything else. See our Spotlight alternatives roundup for the launcher side, and Let's Switch for the reaching-an-open-window side.