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Is there any way to hide an app from the Launchpad in Yosemite? I don't want to delete it or something like that I just want to hide apps that I don't use frequently, and I have a lot of them, putting them in a folder that I ignore makes the Launchpad slow to process, any solution to get rid of them without deleting them?

nelson2tm
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Amir
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  • maybe see if http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/18535/where-is-the-launchpad-database-stored-and-is-there-a-way-to-edit-it-directly may help. – Tetsujin Nov 30 '14 at 18:11
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    You best option is to modify the launchpad database. – Ruskes Nov 30 '14 at 18:50
  • Launchpad only contains apps in /Applications. Is moving them to another directory an option for you? – Arc676 Jan 07 '16 at 11:42
  • Does it cause no problems to move Apps from /Applications – Amir Jan 08 '16 at 13:38
  • I had problems (with Lion) which kept showing old apps (in other partitions). My solution was to Trash the Launchpad db and restart. OS X will recreate the database. – Milliways Dec 01 '14 at 01:33

3 Answers3

2

If you feel that your Launchpad is filled with apps, you can make folders in Launchpad by moving a app over another app.

How to do this shown at wikihow, this is done in Mac OS X Lion, but will work in Yosemite.

What the content of link describes is how to make folders in Launchpad, this is easily done by moving an app (inside Launchpad) over another app. This will make a folder with both apps in it.

bmike
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Rubatharisan Thirumathyam
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2

Prepending a dot (.) will make the folder or file became hidden. You can do it using Finder or shell. Just change the app name, prepending a dot. To unhide the app, just remove the dot. Note that Launchpad will take some time to see the changes. If it doesn't work, try to reboot.

Tip: in Finder, you can toggle to see hidden files using keyboard shortcut CMD + SHIFT + .

Using shell:

cd /Applications
sudo mv YourApp.app .YourApp.app

As you may know, mv command takes 2 parameters: from and to.

To unhide is similar:

cd /Applications
sudo mv .YourApp.app YourApp.app
Borzh
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  • will the app still run if you put a . in front of its name? Easy enough to check but I thought I would ask. – Natsfan May 23 '18 at 01:55
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    That doesn't work for me. I changed an apps name Sparkle.app to .Sparkle.app and the file still showed up in Launchpad with the . (dot) as first character in name. – Natsfan May 23 '18 at 02:14
  • I don't know the details, but you need to wait a bit... after changing the name, the app was appearing in LaunchPad for a couple of minutes, even I could execute it. But after some time it disappeared. If I change the name removing dot, it will appear again. I am using macOS High Sierra (10.13.4) – Borzh May 24 '18 at 13:30
  • @jmh if you press CMD + SHIFT + . in Finder, you will toggle seeing hidden files. Double click on hidden app will launch it without problems. – Borzh May 24 '18 at 13:35
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Just Move them out of the Applications Folder. Copy an app from the Applications folder and paste it in a folder like Downloads or Documents.

Screenshots (in order):

enter image description here

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z05ty4qnj73hjzb/Screenshot%202016-08-21%2010.30.40.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2nel0hfiu9hco2w/Screenshot%202016-08-21%2010.31.10.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gxnm2lg4v64x5n6/Screenshot%202016-08-21%2010.31.23.png?dl=0

bmike
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MetricSystemAdvocate
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    Images are best linked directly [SE uses its own sub-domain at imgur for this] rather than from somewhere like dropbox, where they can vanish later. I've inlined the first two for you, using different methods, so you can see how it's possible to either directly inline via drag & drop, or use html to reduce the apparent size without altering the actual image [2nd way requires drag & drop first, then a re-edit to change to html] – Tetsujin Aug 21 '16 at 12:20
  • This doesn't work at all for me. Moving, duplicating, Launchpad still keeps the pointer to the file in place. Are you doing some manual clearing of the launch database? – bmike Aug 21 '16 at 18:09
  • @bmike did you try to reboot? – Rubatharisan Thirumathyam Aug 22 '16 at 18:49
  • Yes @RubatharisanThirumathyam - tried it on several machines. 10.11 and 10.12 - launch database finds apps in user home folders as well as desktop and /Applications for me. – bmike Aug 22 '16 at 20:30
  • @bmike, I have no idea why it's not working for you - I don't really use the launchpad, spotlight is 100 times faster for me than finding the app in Launchpad :) – Rubatharisan Thirumathyam Aug 23 '16 at 09:51
  • Yea I use Dropzone and PMenu. Simplifies things greatly! – Natsfan May 24 '18 at 15:11