How to open Launchpad on a Mac after macOS 26 removed it.
If you updated to macOS 26 Tahoe and the rocket is gone from your Dock, nothing is broken. Apple removed the Launchpad app. Your apps are all still installed, and this page covers both how to reach them now and how to put the grid back.
What happened to Launchpad in macOS 26 Tahoe
Launchpad arrived in macOS 10.7 Lion in 2011 and stayed for fourteen years. It was the full-screen grid of every application on the Mac, borrowed from the iPhone home screen: pages of icons, dots along the bottom to show which page you were on, folders you made by dragging one icon onto another. You opened it from the rocket in the Dock, from a four-finger pinch on the trackpad, or from a hot corner. For a lot of people it was simply where the apps were.
In macOS 26 Tahoe it is gone. Not hidden, not renamed, not disabled behind a setting: the application itself no longer ships with the system. The Dock icon disappears on update. The four-finger pinch gesture does nothing. Hot Corners in System Settings no longer lists Launchpad as an option. Searching Spotlight for the word Launchpad does not turn it up, because there is no longer a Launchpad to find. There is no preference, no Terminal command and no accessibility toggle that brings it back, which is why the usual advice that works for other missing macOS features does not work here.
What Apple put in its place is a redesigned app launcher inside Spotlight. Press Command-Space and Spotlight now opens with an applications view alongside search, so the apps are one keystroke away and always sorted and searchable. It is a list, not a grid. Nothing you arranged in Launchpad carries over: the pages you ordered, the folders you built and named, the muscle memory of a particular icon sitting in a particular corner. If you used Launchpad as a search box you will barely notice. If you used it as a map, the map is gone.
Where to find your apps in macOS 26 right now
Spotlight, which is what Apple intends you to use
Press Command-Space and start typing an app name. In macOS 26 the Spotlight window also carries an applications view you can open without typing anything, which lists everything installed. This is free, built in, and for most people it genuinely replaces what Launchpad did: you knew the name of the app, and now you type it. It is also faster than a grid if your hands are already on the keyboard. The one thing it does not do is show you every app at once as pictures, which is how some people remember what they have.
The Applications folder in Finder
Open Finder and press Shift-Command-A, or click Applications in the sidebar. Every app installed for all users is here, and switching the window to icon view with Command-1 gets you closest to the old Launchpad look. You can make the icons larger from View then Show View Options, and you can sort by name or by date added. What you do not get is the full-screen presentation, the pages, or the folders you built inside Launchpad, because those were Launchpad's own database and not folders on disk.
The Dock, for the twenty apps you actually open
Drag an app from the Applications folder onto the Dock and it stays. Most people's real daily set is smaller than they think, and pinning it to the Dock removes the need for any launcher at all. You can also add the Applications folder itself to the right-hand side of the Dock and set it to display as a grid, which gives you a small pop-up grid of every app. It is not full screen and it has no pages or folders, but it is the closest thing macOS 26 still ships with.
Nothing you installed was removed
Worth saying plainly, because the empty Dock slot reads like data loss. Launchpad never held your applications; it drew a view of the /Applications folder and of the per-user applications folder. Removing it removed the view. Every app is still on disk, still licensed, still openable by every other means macOS has: Spotlight, Finder, the Dock, a double-click, the open command in Terminal. What was lost is the arrangement, because the page order and the folder names lived in Launchpad's own database rather than in the file system.
If you want the grid itself back, that takes third-party software
There is no setting, no hidden plist and no supported downgrade path within macOS 26. The grid can only come back from an app that draws it. Coco is one such app. It renders a full-screen grid of your installed applications, with pages and dot navigation along the bottom. You create folders by dragging one icon onto another, and the four-finger pinch and a hot corner both open it. It is a paid app with a free trial, which is the honest trade against Spotlight being free and already there.
Launchpad in macOS 25, macOS 26, and Coco
The table is about one question: which of Launchpad's actual behaviours still exist. macOS 25 Sequoia is the last version that shipped it, so that column is the baseline of what you had. macOS 26 Tahoe is what you have now. The Coco column is what a third-party app restores.
Read the middle column first. If nothing you lost is marked no there, you do not need anything else, and Spotlight plus the Dock will serve you fine. The rows that matter are usually the visual ones: the full-screen grid, the pages, and the folders you spent years arranging. Those are the three that no combination of built-in macOS 26 features brings back.
| Coco | macOS 25 (Sequoia) | macOS 26 (Tahoe) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-screen app grid | |||
| Pages with dot navigation | |||
| Folders made by dragging icons together | |||
| Four-finger pinch to open | |||
| Hot corner to open | |||
| Search apps by name | |||
| Included with macOS at no cost |
Getting the Launchpad grid back on macOS 26
First, check whether Spotlight is enough
Press Command-Space and type the first letters of an app you open often. If the app you wanted is the top result every time, you have already replaced Launchpad and can stop here. This step exists so you do not install something you do not need.
Install Coco and open the Launchpad view
Download Coco, drag it to Applications and open it. Press the launcher hotkey, Option-Space by default, and choose Launchpad, or set the gesture in the next step. The grid builds itself from your Applications folder on first run.
Turn the pinch gesture and hot corner back on
In Coco's settings, enable the four-finger pinch and pick a screen corner if you used one. These are the two ways macOS 26 no longer offers, and re-enabling them is what makes the muscle memory work again.
Rebuild your pages and folders
Drag icons to reorder them, drag one onto another to make a folder, and name it. The old Launchpad arrangement cannot be imported because it did not survive the update, so this part is manual and worth doing once.
Questions about Launchpad on macOS 26
- How do I open Launchpad on a Mac running macOS 26?
- You cannot, because the Launchpad application is not part of macOS 26 Tahoe. Apple removed it rather than hiding it, so there is no Dock icon, no pinch gesture, no hot corner option and no Spotlight result for it. To reach your applications, press Command-Space for Spotlight and type the app name, or open the Applications folder in Finder with Shift-Command-A. If what you want specifically is the full-screen grid of icons with pages and folders, that has to come from a third-party app such as Coco. It draws the same style of grid and restores the pinch gesture and hot corner alongside it.
- Why did Apple remove Launchpad?
- Apple replaced it with a redesigned application launcher built into Spotlight in macOS 26. Press Command-Space and Spotlight now shows an applications view alongside its search results, so every installed app is reachable from the same keystroke you already use to search files and run calculations. The reasoning appears to be consolidation: one entry point for finding anything rather than a separate full-screen surface just for apps. Launchpad had also drifted from the iPhone home screen it was modelled on back in 2011. Whether that is an improvement depends entirely on whether you used Launchpad by typing or by looking.
- Are my apps deleted if Launchpad is gone?
- No. Launchpad never stored applications; it displayed them. It read the /Applications folder and your user-level applications folder and drew icons for what it found there. Removing Launchpad removed that display and nothing else, so every app you installed is still on disk, still licensed and still opens normally from Spotlight, Finder, the Dock or a double-click. What genuinely did not survive is the arrangement, since your page order and the names of any folders you built lived inside Launchpad's own database rather than in the file system. Those cannot be recovered or migrated, only rebuilt.
- Can I bring Launchpad back with a Terminal command or a setting?
- No. This is the part people spend the most time on, so it is worth being direct: there is no defaults write command, no hidden preference pane, no accessibility toggle and no supported way to restore Launchpad within macOS 26. The binary is not present on the system, so there is nothing for a command to re-enable. Copying the app from an older macOS installation is not a supported path either and will not work reliably against a newer system. The only route to the grid is software that draws its own, and the only route to the original app is staying on or reverting to macOS 25 Sequoia.
- What does Coco restore, exactly?
- The full-screen grid of your installed apps, drawn over your desktop the way Launchpad was. Pages with dots along the bottom, so a large app collection splits across screens the way it used to. Folders you create by dragging one icon onto another and then naming. The four-finger pinch gesture on the trackpad, and a hot corner if you assigned one. Search inside the grid, so typing narrows it. It does not import your old Launchpad layout, because that data did not survive the macOS 26 update. Coco also does other things you may or may not want, including app launching, clipboard history, a calculator, unit and currency conversion, emoji search, screenshots, live captions and plugins.
- Is it worth paying for this when Spotlight is free?
- Often not, and it depends on how you used Launchpad. If you opened it and immediately typed, Spotlight in macOS 26 does the same job faster, costs nothing and is already installed. The case for a paid app is narrow but real: you navigated visually, you had folders you built over years, and you find a text list genuinely slower because you remember apps by icon and position rather than by name. Coco is a real Mac app, not a browser tab in a window, priced once at $99, $49 at the launch price, with no subscription, no account, and a seven-day free trial. Run the trial and see which way you actually reach for apps before deciding.
Copy the prompt, or send it straight to the AI you already use — it drives Coco through the same commands you would type yourself.
Install the Coco skill (npx skills add butterflydream-ai/Coco --skill coco -g -y), then use coco to help me with How to open Launchpad on a Mac after macOS 26 removed it..