How to Organize and Reset the Launchpad Layout on a Mac

The macOS Launchpad is designed to mimic the iOS home screen, giving you a massive grid of all the applications currently installed on your Mac. While it is a convenient way to launch apps without digging through the Finder, it can quickly become cluttered if you install dozens of programs. Fortunately, Apple provides several simple tools to organize your app icons into folders, and a built-in terminal command to completely reset the layout if things get too messy.

How to Rearrange Apps and Create Folders

Organizing Launchpad works exactly like organizing the apps on an iPhone or iPad.

1. Open Launchpad by clicking its icon in the Dock, or by pinching your thumb and three fingers together on your trackpad.
2. Click and hold your mouse cursor on any application icon. After a second, all the icons will begin to “jiggle” indicating you are in edit mode.
3. To simply move an app, drag it to a new location on the grid and release your mouse.
4. To create a folder, drag one app icon and drop it directly on top of a second app icon. Launchpad will instantly create a folder containing both apps and automatically generate a category name (like “Productivity” or “Games”).
5. To rename the folder, click the folder to open it, then click on the white text name at the top of the screen and type your new custom name.
6. To remove an app from a folder, open the folder, click and drag the app outside the folder boundary, and drop it back onto the main grid.

When you are finished organizing, simply click on any empty space between the icons to stop the jiggling and exit edit mode.

How to Reset the Launchpad Layout

If you have spent months downloading, deleting, and dragging apps around, your Launchpad might have random blank spaces and disorganized folders everywhere. It can take hours to manually fix this. Instead, you can force macOS to wipe your custom layout and reset Launchpad to its absolute factory default state (where Apple’s default apps are on page one, and third-party apps are listed alphabetically on page two).

1. Open Launchpad and type Terminal into the top search bar, then hit Enter to open it.
2. In the Terminal window, carefully copy and paste the following exact command:

   defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock

3. Press the Enter key.

Your screen will quickly flash as the macOS Dock reboots. When you open Launchpad again, all of your custom folders will be gone, and the grid will be perfectly organized exactly as it was the day you bought your Mac.