Delete ANY App From Launchpad

Hey guys, this is Mack heads 101, and I just installed Mac OS 10 Lion. I decided that I would try out the new Launchpad feature. So let me just show you something I noticed with it that I didn't like, and I figured out how to fix it.

If you go into Launchpad, you'll notice that it looks just like the iPhone home screen, which you might or might not have known about. When you hold down on an icon, it shakes and whatever, and normally you'd be able to hit a little X next to some of these things to uninstall it. For instance, next to this app, there's an X, but that's because I downloaded it from the Mac App Store.

For a lot of these apps, there's no X next to the icon. Now, that's because you didn't download it from the Mac App Store. The way you're supposed to delete an app is by deleting it from your computer, dragging it to the trash from the Applications folder or whatever. But for me at least, I don't necessarily use all the apps in my Applications folder, so maybe I don't want some of them in Launchpad that I want in my Applications folder.

There's actually a pretty simple way to get rid of things in Launchpad without deleting them from your computer. It just requires you do a couple of things in Terminal, so let me show you how to do this. First, let me get out of Launchpad.

You're gonna want to open up Terminal. You can do this by going to your Applications folder, then down to Utilities, and then throw up Terminal right there. Alright, and with Terminal, we're gonna be accessing the files that Launchpad uses to store all the icons that you have in it.

That way, we can get rid of an app in Launchpad without deleting it from your computer. So you're gonna want to type the command that I type exactly the way I type it just to make sure that it works. Type CD space tilde slash library with capital L slash application backslash space support slash dock but the capital D. Now we hit enter.

Now you should type LS and see a file similar to this one which will have a bunch of letters, numbers, and dashes in its name. Then it'll end with .dB. Just copy this right here, right-click, copy. Okay, and now we're gonna edit this file using something called SQLite.

So just type SQLite 3 space and then paste this in. Now go ahead and hit enter. Alright, now we're gonna type a command in SQLite that'll basically show us all of the applications in Launchpad that are currently registered.

So we'll type select space star space from apps and then semicolon, not colon, semicolon, then hit enter. You'll see all these things show up, and the way they're formatted is there will be a number, then a little line, and then the name of the app.

So, let's say we want to get rid of Calculator, which was what I was using for this example. So here it is, and to the left of it, before the first line, is that number which happens to be 267 for me. So this is all we need is this little number.

Now we'll type delete from apps with spaces between all those where space and then left parentheses row ID equals and then type that number, 267 was the number right there, now semicolon, and hit enter. Now it's deleted from Launchpad at this point, but Launchpad isn't going to update until we restart it.

So in order to do this, first of all, in this Terminal, we'll press control-d. Okay, and now we'll type kill all space dock. Alright, now you'll see my screen go gray for a little bit, and then it'll go back to normal, and anything you had minimized will become unminimized. That's just a side effect, but now if I go into Launchpad, you will see the Calculator is no longer there because we deleted it through Terminal.

It's still in my Apps folder, so I can still open up Calculator. Let me just show you that it's still there, so that way you don't panic and think you don't either the app. But it's no longer in Launchpad.

So, I found this really helpful because the first time when you open up Launchpad, all of the apps in your Applications folder, they're not sorted, you know, and it's confusing. So it really helps to get rid of some of the stuff that maybe you don't use on a day-to-day basis that you still want to keep on your computer.

So let me just open up Calculator; you can see I still have it installed. It's still on my computer; it just isn't in Launchpad because we removed it.

So that's just a little trick I noticed online. So thanks for watching Mack heads 101. If you enjoyed this video, if you learned something, go ahead and like the video. But anyway, thanks for watching, subscribe, and goodbye.