Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#1

Post by roversx » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC

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.

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

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#2

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 26, 2025, 1:11 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#3

Post by ewxyz » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

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

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#4

Post by roversx » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

ewxyz wrote: post #3

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

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

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#5

Post by hbbio » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

ewxyz wrote: post #3

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

There's more than the README that is generated.

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#6

Post by ewxyz » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 2:55 PM UTC

hbbio wrote: post #5

ewxyz wrote: post #3

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

There's more than the README that is generated.

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

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#7

Post by oidar » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

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

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#8

Post by roversx » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

oidar wrote: post #7

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

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.

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#9

Post by philo23 » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

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...

Re: Show HN: An open source Launchpad for macOS 26

#10

Post by oidar » Sat, Sep 27, 2025, 3:07 PM UTC

roversx wrote: post #8

oidar wrote: post #7

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

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.

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.