MacOS 26 apple removed launchpad?

MacOS 26 replaced launchpad with spotlight, your installed apps can be accessed by pressing cmd+space and then cmd+1.

At present, there’s no viable way to restore Launchpad unless Apple decides to do so. Since this was a company decision when they introduced the MacOS 26, developers are currently working on a third-party alternative.

Launchpad is still there in /System/Applications/, but hidden from Finder. You can still see it if you ls in terminal:

ls /System/Applications/

You can still restore it by disabling the new Spotlight:

sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/SpotlightUI.plist SpotlightPlus -dict Enabled -bool false

Once reboot, you will see Launchpad in your Applications folder, but sacrifice the new Spotlight feature.

If you really don't want to disable new Spotlight, here's a script that link apps into a directory, so you can use that directory as LaunchPad.

#!/bin/zsh
ME="$(dirname "$(realpath "$0")")"

if [[ $1 = "-f" ]] {
    if [[ -z $2 ]] {
        source $ME/buildLaunchPad.config.zsh
    } else {
        source "$2"
    }
} elif [[ -z $1 ]] {
} else {
cat << EOF
Usage: 
$0 [-f [config_file] ]
EOF
exit
}

if [[ -z $scan_paths ]] {
    scan_paths=(/Applications /System/Applications $HOME/Applications)
}
if [[ -z $target_path ]] {
    target_path=$ME/Apps
}
if [[ -z $registry_path ]] {
    registry_path=$ME/database
}
# extern excludes
unset ME

#############

alias inode="stat -f \"%i\""
mkdir "$target_path"
mkdir "$registry_path"
for this_path ($scan_paths) {
    for file ($this_path/*.app) {
        datafile_path=$registry_path/${file//\//-}.inode
        if [[ -n $(find "$target_path" -inum "$(cat "$datafile_path")" ) ]] {
        } else {
            ln -sh "$file" "$target_path/$(basename "$file")"
            echo $(inode "$target_path/$(basename $file)") > "$datafile_path"
        }
    }
}