How to Remove Launchpad From the Dock on Mac

If you launch apps from Spotlight or the Dock itself, the Launchpad icon is just taking up a slot. Removing it is a two-second drag — and Launchpad stays fully available through a gesture, a key, and Spotlight whenever you occasionally want the grid.

Drag it off the Dock

1. Click and hold the Launchpad icon (the rocket, or the 3×3 grid on recent macOS).
2. Drag it up and away from the Dock — a few centimetres is enough.
3. Wait for the Remove label to appear above the icon, then let go. It vanishes in a puff.

Prefer menus? Right-click the Launchpad icon → Options → Remove from Dock does the same thing. Either way you're only removing a shortcut — Launchpad itself is part of macOS and is completely unaffected.

Three ways to open Launchpad without the icon

• Trackpad pinch: pinch your thumb and three fingers together on the trackpad. Launchpad fills the screen; spread the same fingers apart to close it. (Check the gesture is on under System Settings → Trackpad → More Gestures.)
• The F4 key: on Apple keyboards, F4 carries the Launchpad symbol (a grid of six dots) and opens it directly. On older keyboards F4 may show Dashboard instead — Spotlight and the pinch still work.
• Spotlight: press Cmd+Space, type "launchpad", hit Return. Slightly ironic — using a launcher to launch the launcher — but it works everywhere, external keyboards included.

You can also give Launchpad a custom keystroke at System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Launchpad & Dock → Show Launchpad — it ships unassigned, so pick anything free, like Ctrl+Option+L.

Put it back (the undo)

1. Open a Finder window and press Cmd+Shift+A for the Applications folder.
2. Find Launchpad in the list.
3. Drag it into the left side of the Dock, and drop it where you want it.

The icon behaves exactly as before — removing and restoring it costs nothing and changes no settings.

What to use instead

Most people who remove Launchpad settle into one of these habits: Spotlight (Cmd+Space, type two letters, Return — the fastest launcher macOS ships), pinning their real daily apps to the Dock, or opening the Applications folder itself from the Dock as a grid stack. If Launchpad's one redeeming job for you was deleting App Store apps, you can do that in Finder instead: drag the app from Applications to the Trash.

Fine-tune the pinch while you're at it

If the Launchpad pinch fires when you don't want it (or never fires when you do), the gesture has its own switch and siblings worth reviewing — see the Launchpad gesture on Mac.