App to Replace Launchpad on macOS 26 Tahoe
macOS 26 Tahoe does not have Launchpad. If you were not using it, Launchpad is an iOS-like feature on the Mac side to arrange and view apps on pseudo Home Screen. Whether or not you use Launchpad is irrelevant I suppose; at least for Apple, the company has already decided it wasn’t a popular feature. It was introduced in Mac OS X Lion, but the feature hasn’t seen any updates either.
If you were using Launchpad, there is now a replacement app called AppGrid Launcher, a launcher app with similar interface. It’s from the same developer that made Launchpad Manager, and the app is available from Mac App Store. From what I can tell, it’s a freemium app — starting at free for most of the Launchpad features, and for pro, it can be either subscription at $1.99 monthly, $14.99 annually, or $39.99 one-time payment.
Personally, one of the reason why I stopped using Launchpad to manage apps was because its tendency to fail to manage or delete apps from the interface. The only apps that can be removed via Launchpad were Mac App Store versions, and often Launchpad would be littered with duplicates of non Mac App Store app icons. It might have been better if Apple made Launchpad customizable to the level of iOS, because there is no official way to fix Launchpad aside from using third party apps or to regenerate all of the app layouts. Not to mention Time Machine could not save Launchpad settings.
macOS 26 Tahoe seems to have better Spotlight integration of “app searching” than its predecessors — I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet. That was the sole reason why I was using Launchpad on my end; Launchpad searched through apps faster than Spotlight. But for anyone who is missing the actual Home Screen like interface, this app will work nicely.
note: Featured image is from Zeka Logic