The Mac Launchpad replacement for macOS 26.
Tahoe turned the app grid into a list inside Spotlight. Coco draws the grid again — the same pages, the same folders, the same pinch — on macOS 26 and every version back to 14.
Try the grid here first
This is the real behaviour, running in your browser: drag one icon onto another to make a folder, use the dots to change page, or type to filter — including pinyin, so wx finds 微信.
What macOS 26 removed, exactly
Launchpad was never a feature anyone wrote about. It was a habit. You pinched four fingers on the trackpad, a grid of every installed application slid over the desktop, and you clicked the icon you were after — the same icon, in the same place, every time. Thirteen years of that builds something closer to muscle memory than to a workflow, which is roughly why nobody noticed how much they leaned on it until it was gone.
macOS 26 Tahoe removed it. What arrived instead is a list of applications inside Spotlight: alphabetical, one column, scrolled rather than laid out. For opening an app whose name you can already type, a list is arguably the better tool. Launchpad was actually good at one thing: looking at everything you own and pointing at the one you want. A list is not a substitute, because position is what made it fast, and a list has no positions to remember.
So this is a narrower request than “a Mac app launcher”. A launcher wants you to type. Launchpad wanted you to look. Coco does both, but this page is about the second one: a Mac Launchpad replacement that puts the grid, the pages, the folders and the gestures back where they were and then stays out of the way. If you never opened Launchpad in your life, the rest of Coco is the more interesting half.
What a Mac Launchpad replacement has to put back
Launchpad folders, built by dragging icons together
Drag one icon onto another and a folder appears in the second icon’s slot, exactly as Launchpad folders always worked. Rename it, drop more apps in, drag apps between pages. Pull an app back out and it lands beside the folder. Take the second-to-last one out and the folder dissolves on its own rather than lingering as a container with one thing in it. That is the small piece of housekeeping the original did for you, and the one most grid replacements forget. Folders can be dragged around like any other tile, so a Design folder and a Utilities folder can sit at the top left where your hand already goes.
Pages, and the dots that move between them
The grid pages rather than scrolls, with a row of dots underneath and one dot per page. Click a dot, swipe horizontally, or use the arrow keys. Apps you rarely open get pushed to page two or three and stop competing for the first screen. That is the whole point of paging: position is what made Launchpad fast, and a position only stays memorable if the page it is on does not move. The arrangement lives in Coco’s own file, so a system update cannot clear it, and newly installed apps land at the end instead of reshuffling what you already set up.
The Launchpad gesture: pinch on the trackpad
Pinch four or five fingers to open the grid — your choice of finger count in Settings → Launchpad → Trackpad Pinch. The Launchpad gesture is the part people miss most, because it was never a shortcut you had to remember; the hand just did it. Coco has to take that gesture back from macOS’s own app picker to use it, and that hand-off only lands after your next login or restart. That is why the setting is marked experimental, and why the first pinch after switching it on can do nothing. Pinching out again closes the grid.
A Launchpad hot corner Coco watches itself
Pick a corner in Coco’s own settings and throw the pointer at it. The Launchpad hot corner is the steadier of the two pointer routes: no login required, no gesture to hand over. Coco watches the pointer directly rather than going through System Settings → Hot Corners, which matters because Tahoe removed the Launchpad entry from that menu entirely — the system pane can no longer offer this even if you want it. There is a short dwell before it fires, so a corner you brush past on the way to the menu bar does not open the grid at you.
The hotkey, for when the hand is on the keyboard
One key combination opens the grid over whatever you were doing, and pressing it again or hitting Esc puts it away. This is the route that needs no configuration, no login and no gesture arbitration, so it is the one to try first if you are checking whether the grid is what you actually wanted back. The optional menu bar icon opens it too. All four routes — hotkey, pinch, corner, menu bar — land on the same grid in the same arrangement, so you can switch between them without relearning anything.
Type to filter
Start typing with the grid open and it narrows as you go. This is the one place Coco is plainly better than what Apple shipped: it runs the same index as Coco’s search panel, which means pinyin, romaji, Korean chosung, initials and your own aliases all match. 微信 answers to wx, メモ answers to memo, 카카오톡 answers to ㅋㅋㅇ, and ad finds Activity Monitor. What is left reflows to the front, so the first match sits under the top-left slot where your eye already is.
A Mac Launchpad replacement next to Spotlight, Raycast and Alfred
Nearly every Mac Launchpad replacement you will be pointed at is a launcher — a text field that rewards you for naming the thing precisely. Spotlight, Raycast and Alfred are all very good at that, and Coco ships a text field too. None of them draws a grid. That is not an oversight on their part, it is a different bet about how people find software: type-first assumes you know what you are looking for. It only becomes a problem when a grid was specifically the thing you lost.
So the honest version is this. If what you want is a keyboard-first launcher, Raycast and Alfred are mature and you should go look at them properly. If what you want is the app grid back, and you would rather not adopt a whole launcher to get it, that is the gap — and since Tahoe there is very little else in it. Coco happens to be both, and it is bought once rather than rented, but the grid is why this page exists.
| Coco | Spotlight | Raycast | Alfred | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| App grid with pages | ||||
| Drag one icon onto another to make a folder | ||||
| Pinch gesture | ||||
| Hot corner | ||||
| Type to filter | ||||
| Pinyin, romaji and chosung matching | Partial | |||
| Works with no network | Mostly | |||
| Price | List $99, launch $49 | Included | Free or $8/mo | £34 once |
Getting the app grid back on macOS 26
Install Coco and open the grid
Download Coco, drag it into Applications, and open it once so it can read what you have installed. Press the Launchpad hotkey and the grid comes up over whatever you were doing, already filled in. There is nothing to configure before this part works.
Put it back on the pinch
Settings → Launchpad → Trackpad Pinch. Choose four fingers or five. Coco has to take that gesture away from macOS’s own app picker to use it, and that swap only lands after your next login or restart. So if the first pinch after switching it on does nothing, that is why.
Or set a hot corner instead
Same settings pane, pick a corner. Coco watches the pointer itself and waits a moment before opening, so a corner you brush past by accident does not trigger it. This does not go through System Settings → Hot Corners, which is useful, because Tahoe removed the Launchpad entry from that menu.
Arrange it once
Drag icons into the order you want, drop one onto another to build folders, and push the apps you rarely touch to the last page. Set the number of columns and the icon size to taste, and hide the apps you never want to see. Coco saves as you go, and there is a reset if you want the default arrangement back.
Questions people actually ask
- Does this work on macOS 26 Tahoe?
- Yes — Tahoe is the reason it exists. Apple removed Launchpad in macOS 26 and replaced it with an alphabetical list inside Spotlight, and there is no setting anywhere that brings the old grid back. Coco draws its own grid instead: the same pages, the same folders, the same pinch, reading your Applications folder directly rather than the database Tahoe deleted. It also runs on macOS 14 and macOS 15 if you have not upgraded yet, and it needs Apple Silicon. Nothing about it depends on the removed system feature still being there.
- Is it the real Launchpad?
- No, and no application can be. Apple removed the system Launchpad in macOS 26; a third-party app cannot restore a deleted OS feature, and anything claiming to is either downgrading you or misdescribing itself. What Coco does is redraw the same interface. A full-screen grid of every installed app, laid out in pages you arrange, with folders you build by dropping one icon onto another, opened by a pinch, a hot corner or a hotkey. The behaviour is deliberately identical so your muscle memory keeps working; the implementation underneath is entirely Coco’s.
- Will my old folder layout come back?
- No, and it is worth being blunt about that. macOS 26 drops the database the old Launchpad layout lived in, so by the time you install anything there is nothing left on disk to import — the arrangement is gone, not hidden. Coco starts from the contents of your Applications folder and you arrange it once: drag icons into the order you want, drop one onto another to make a folder, push what you rarely open to the last page. That layout lives in Coco’s own file, so a system update cannot clear it the same way.
- How do I make Launchpad folders again?
- The same way you always did: drag one app icon onto another and a folder opens in the second icon's slot, ready to be named. Drop more apps in by dragging them on top, and drag apps out again to break it up — pull the second-to-last app out and the folder dissolves by itself rather than sitting there as a container holding one thing. Folders behave like tiles, so you can drag them between positions and onto other pages. None of this depends on the system Launchpad, which macOS 26 removed; Coco keeps the whole arrangement, folders included, in its own file, so a system update cannot wipe it the way Tahoe wiped the original layout.
- Can I still use the Launchpad gesture on the trackpad?
- Yes, with one caveat worth knowing up front. Open Settings → Launchpad → Trackpad Pinch and choose four fingers or five; pinching in opens Coco's grid and pinching out closes it. The caveat is that macOS binds that gesture to its own app picker, so Coco has to take it over, and the hand-off only applies from your next login or restart. That is why the setting is labelled experimental and why the very first pinch after enabling it often does nothing at all. If you would rather not restart, the hotkey and the hot corner work immediately and open exactly the same grid.
- Can I set a Launchpad hot corner on macOS 26?
- Not through System Settings — Tahoe removed the Launchpad entry from the Hot Corners menu when it removed Launchpad itself, so the system pane has nothing to offer. Coco provides its own instead: pick a corner in Coco's settings and it watches the pointer directly, opening the grid when the pointer rests there. There is a short dwell built in, so travelling past the corner on the way to the menu bar or the Dock does not trigger it. It needs no login to take effect, unlike the pinch, which makes the hot corner the most reliable pointer route back to the grid.
- Do I have to use the rest of Coco?
- No. It all ships together, but you can set the hotkey to open the grid and never touch the launcher, the clipboard or the plugins.
- How is it different from Raycast or Alfred?
- Raycast and Alfred are keyboard-first launchers: press a hotkey, type a name, hit return. Both are mature and very good at it, and neither draws an app grid — typing assumes you already know what you are looking for. Coco has the text field too, but it also has the grid, which is the part macOS 26 removed and the part those tools were never trying to replace. The other difference is commercial: Raycast Pro is $8 a month and Alfred sells a Powerpack licence, while Coco's list price is $99, one-time purchase, with a $49 launch price.
- Why is the Launchpad gesture marked experimental?
- Because it is the one route that has to take something away from macOS. The four- and five-finger pinch is owned by the system's own app picker, and Coco can only use it by claiming the gesture, which the window server applies from your next login rather than immediately. So the setting can look broken for one session: you switch it on, you pinch, nothing happens, and everything is in fact working as designed. It is labelled experimental so that sequence is expected rather than reported as a bug. The hotkey, the menu bar item and the hot corner take over nothing and work the moment you set them.
- Is Coco a full Mac Launchpad replacement?
- For the grid, yes: pages and their dots, Launchpad folders made by dragging one icon onto another, the pinch gesture, a hot corner and type-to-filter all behave the way they did. Coco draws them from your Applications folder rather than from the database Tahoe deleted. The one thing no Mac Launchpad replacement can do is bring your old arrangement across, because macOS 26 removes it during the upgrade — there is nothing left on disk to read. So you arrange it once, and after that the layout is Coco's own file and survives system updates.
- What does it cost?
- Seven days free, with no card and no account — every feature is unlocked during the trial and nothing is held back for the paid tier. After that, Coco is a one-time purchase: list price $99 for one Mac, $119 for two, $139 for three, with a launch price of $49 for one Mac, $69 for two, or $89 for three. It is a one-time purchase, not a subscription: no renewal, no seat that expires under you, and it keeps working offline with no periodic check-in. Updates within this major version are included, there is a 14-day refund with no questions asked, and you can move the licence to a new Mac yourself.