LaunchOS 2.1.0 — Mac version

LaunchOS runs on any Apple Silicon Mac and 64-bit Intel machines as long as you're on macOS 26 or later. The interface speaks your language too — Russian, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean, French, and Japanese are all covered.

Think of it as Launchpad with the training wheels off. You can hide the apps you never use, change the grid size to fit more (or fewer) icons on screen, and set up keyboard shortcuts so you hardly need to move your hand off the keys. A quick gesture brings the whole grid into view, which feels more natural than hunting for the F4 key.

Version 2.1.0 fills in a couple of gaps that made earlier releases feel unfinished. You can now uninstall apps directly from the launcher — long-press an icon or right-click and the option's right there. The same right-click menu and the status bar menu both gained a Restart command, handy when something locks up and you want back in fast.

If you've ever been annoyed that Apple's Launchpad won't let you trim the clutter or reach apps the way you want, LaunchOS is worth a look. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel — it just sands off the rough edges.

Treating it like a system replacement instead of an app

Most slip-ups are small and easy to fix once you spot them. The commonest is treating LaunchOS as a system replacement rather than an app sitting alongside the built-in Launchpad. People drag it into Applications, launch it once, then wonder why their F4 key still fires up Apple's version. You need to set LaunchOS to open at login and reassign the gesture or key you used for the old Launchpad — otherwise the two just coexist silently, and you never see the new one.

Another stumble: forgetting about the grid-size slider. A fresh install defaults to a middle setting that suits a 13-inch screen well enough, but on a larger display the icons can look spaced out and too big. Nudge the grid up a couple of notches and you fit far more apps into view without scrolling to a second page.

Hiding apps too aggressively catches a few people out. You right-click an icon, pick Hide, and later can't find the app at all. It's still on your Mac — just absent from the launcher. The fix is to open LaunchOS preferences and unhide it from the list, but first-time users sometimes assume the app has vanished and reinstall it unnecessarily.

Long-press for uninstall also causes confusion when someone tries it on a non-Mac App Store application. LaunchOS can only uninstall apps that follow Apple's standard bundle layout — most do, but a few utilities and developer tools sit in odd places and won't respond. The icon just wobbles and nothing happens. That's not a bug; it's a limitation worth knowing before you think the uninstall feature is broken.

Sub-second launch on Apple Silicon, a slight pause on older Intel Macs

LaunchOS opens in under a second on Apple Silicon machines, even with a grid packed full of icons. On older Intel Macs there's a slight pause — maybe a beat and a half — but once it's up, scrolling and swiping between pages stays smooth. It's a lightweight app that doesn't feel like one; Liquid Glass effects render cleanly without making the fans spin up on machines that usually complain about translucent UI.

Memory use sits around 90–120 MB while idle, which is modest for something that hangs around in the background waiting for a gesture or shortcut. CPU ticks are near zero unless you're actively scrolling or invoking the grid. I've left it running for days without seeing it creep upward, something you can't say about every menu-bar utility.

Stability has been solid across the 2.1.0 release. The Restart command added in this version does what it says — useful the one time LaunchOS got confused after a macOS beta update and refused to draw its background correctly. A quick restart from the status bar menu put things right without a full logout. Crashes are rare, and when they happen the app relaunches fast enough that you barely notice the interruption.

Muscle-memory launchers bond with it fastest

People who rely on muscle memory for launching apps tend to bond with LaunchOS fastest. If you've trained yourself to flick four fingers up or hit a corner hotkey and visually pick an icon, this fits straight into that habit without asking you to learn anything new. It's the same pattern, just less rigid.

Designers, video editors, and anyone with a sprawling Applications folder benefit from the hide feature more than most. Adobe and Affinity suites dump a dozen helper utilities into the launcher that you never click directly. Tucking those away leaves a grid that shows only the apps you actually open — Photoshop, not the uninstaller, the font manager, and three background daemons you forgot existed.

Users who've grown annoyed with macOS 26's design shifts also find LaunchOS a quiet relief. The Liquid Glass support means it looks at home on the latest release, but it doesn't chase every visual trend Apple throws at the desktop. It stays predictable, and that predictability is the point for someone who just wants to launch an app and get on with work.

If you spend half your day switching between a dozen apps and the other half cursing at a cluttered Launchpad grid, LaunchOS earns its place. It's not flashy, but it removes enough small frictions that after a week you forget it's even there — until you sit down at someone else's Mac and wonder why everything feels harder.

• App uninstallation — long-press or right-click an icon to remove it
• Restart command added to the status bar menu and right-click context menu

• macOS 26 or later
• Apple Silicon or 64-bit Intel Mac