Supercharge your Launchpad

Beautify opening Mac apps with iPad–like simplicity

REQUIRES

OS X 10.11 or later

YOU WILL LEARN

How to organize Launchpad to better suit your needs

IT WILL TAKE

15 minutes

Launchpad is a simple but effective way to open apps on your Mac. If you often wish your Mac resembled or functioned like the Home screen on iOS, Launchpad is the feature for you.

Rather than scouring through the Applications folder, or typing app names in Spotlight and being distracted by irrelevant results, Launchpad focuses solely on your apps. It’s a good way to review what’s installed on your Mac — you see a space-hogging app you don’t need any more, or that you meant to finish a game but got sidetracked.

Open Launchpad by pressing its key on an Apple keyboard — the one whose icon shows a 3x2 grid of squares: in the F4 position on modern Apple keyboards. Or, set your own key combo in Apple > System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Launchpad & Dock.