With macOS Tahoe, Launchpad has been replaced by an App Library–style mode within Spotlight. While the alleged intention is UX consistency across the Apple ecosystem, the result is both a catastrophic usability regression and a radical break in consistency with iOS and iPadOS.
Predefined App Library categorization is functionally incoherent:
On iOS and now macOS, Apple’s predefined App Library categories place apps with seemingly identical functionality into unrelated groups—for example, 3D scanning tools scattered across Education, Utilities, and Productivity. Instead of making apps easier to find, this effectively creates a labyrinth that users must traverse to locate apps whose names and icons they may not recall. However Apple defines its app categories, they are not only inconsistent but also hopelessly inadequate for the long tail of real-world applications and user workflows.
Loss of user control:
Launchpad enabled users to group and organize applications according to their workflows. This aligns with Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines, which emphasize user control, discoverability, and predictable behavior. The new Spotlight interface removes that flexibility, locking users into predefined categories that both impede and mislead—and cannot be overridden.
Consistency across platforms is broken:
If the goal was to unify iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, this approach actually undermines consistency. On iOS and iPadOS, users can still rely on a customizable Home Screen—a Launchpad-like experience—as their primary way of launching apps. In Tahoe, that option has been removed. macOS now forces users to depend exclusively on Spotlight with App Library categories, while eliminating the very feature that was consistent across platforms.
Catastrophic impact on my workflow:
As an interdisciplinary artist working in 2D, 3D, and time-based media, as well as coding, I make extensive use of a constantly changing array of AI tools and experiment with many new apps and web services, which I often turn into Web Apps. I cannot possibly recall the names of every native and web app on my system. I need predictable access to groups of related tools. Tahoe’s new auto-categories split those apps apart arbitrarily, slowing me down and interrupting established workflows, forcing me to navigate the aforementioned labyrinth just to find what I need.
Proposal:
A constructive way forward High-level objective:
Simply restore Launchpad—or restore the ability to customize app categories/folders and manually assign apps to them, overriding or augmenting the predefined categories. This ensures users can launch apps according to their workflow, without needing to remember exact names or icons.
Possible solutions:
Allow manual subfolders within Applications, represented hierarchically in Spotlight. Provide a fullscreen Launchpad-like organizer (with uninstall via long-click, etc.), either as a replacement or toggleable option. Retain Apple’s auto-categories for those who prefer them, but let users override or augment them with their own.
In summary:
Tahoe eliminates a working, consistent paradigm (Launchpad/Home Screen) and forces reliance on an App Library system that categorizes poorly and cannot be customized. This is both a step backwards in functionality and a break in cross-platform consistency. A constructive solution is to restore Launchpad—or at least restore the ability for users to organize apps in ways that fit their workflows.