Mac OS X Mountain Lion: 4 Terrific Timesaving Tools

How to Customize Your Mountain Lion Launchpad

By Bob LeVitus from OS X Mountain Lion For Dummies

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Launchpad in Mountain Lion presents all the applications in your Applications folder in a view that looks like the home screen of any iOS device (that is, iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch). Click Launchpad’s Dock icon. It fills your screen with big, beautiful application icons.

Launchpad is configurable, just like home screens on i-devices. As you’re about to see, you can rearrange app icons on a page, move them from one page to another, organize them in folders, and delete them. Say it all together now: “Just like on i-devices.”

If your Launchpad has more than one page of apps, you see two or more dots near the bottom of the screen (directly above the arrow cursor). To change pages, press the left-arrow or right-arrow key.

To launch an app, just click its icon. In a heartbeat, Launchpad disappears, and the app replaces it on your screen.

For those who are unfamiliar with iOS or devices that run it, here’s how these things work on your Mac:

To rearrange app icons: Click and drag the app to its new location.
To move apps to the next or previous page: Click and drag the app to the left or right edge of the screen. When the next page of apps appears, drag the app to its new location on that page.
To add an app to your Dock: Click and drag the app onto the left side of the Dock.
To create a folder for apps: Drag one app’s icon on top of another app’s icon to create a folder.
To add an app to a folder: Drag the app onto that folder to add it.
To move an app out of a folder: Click the folder to open it, and drag the app out of the folder.
To change a folder’s name: Click to open the folder, click the current name, and then type a new name.
To uninstall apps: Click an app’s icon, but don’t release the mouse button until all the icons begin to wiggle. Apps that can be uninstalled display a Delete button (X); click to uninstall the app.

Press Esc to stop the wiggling.