Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
Let me show you how you can use and organize LaunchPad on your Mac.
So, I'm using Mac OS 10.9.
We're going to take a look at LaunchPad.
You can start LaunchPad by clicking on its icon in the Dock here and then you see icons
representing all of the different apps that you have installed.
Now it looks in your Applications folder for these apps so if you don't see something listed
maybe it is not properly installed there or it is not compatible in some way with LaunchPad
or your operating system.
At the the bottom you see a bunch of dots which shows you how many pages you've got.
You can, if you use a track pad, you can use two fingers scrolling left and right to go
between them.
You can also use Command and the left and right arrows to look at the different pages.
Or just click on one of these to jump right to the page.
The main thing that you want to do with LaunchPad, of course, is to launch apps.
You can do that by simply clicking on the app and it will launch.
You can go back into LaunchPad and run something else and it will quickly launch as well.
The same as clicking in the Dock except in the Dock you only have a limited number of
apps that you could put here and with LaunchPad you have all of your apps.
So it is all about convenience.
You want to be able to use LaunchPad quickly to get the app you want running.
So you want to learn the keyboard shortcut key.
For me it is the F7 key and you can see it quickly runs out there and I can hit F7 or
Escape to exit it.
Check in System Preferences under Keyboard and then Shortcuts.
Then look at LaunchPad & Dock and you can see what your keyboard shortcut is here and
make sure you have it turned on.
That will let you get there really quickly.
Then you want to see which app you want to launch.
Now notice there is a search field here at the top.
You don't even have to click in it.
You just start typing because there is no other place for the text to go.
It goes in there and you see as I type it narrows down what is possible.
If I can narrow it down to just one, like that, I can actually use the return key and
launch it.
So it is a very quick way to be able to launch an app.
For instance, if I wanted to launch Contacts I can do F7, start typing Contacts, and as
soon as I see it selected I hit return and Contacts will launch.
Now you also have the ability to organize in here a bit.
You can see I've got some Folders.
Folders are created when you take two apps and drag one on top of the other.
So, for instance, if I wanted to take say Compressor and Final Cut, put them in a folder
together, just drag one onto the other, it comes up with a name it thinks might work.
I can click here and change the name if I want.
I can see what is in that folder.
I can drag stuff out of it as well and put it where I want.
I can drag things around in here to rearrange.
It kind of works the same way it does in iOS.
Now LaunchPad serves another very useful function.
It lets you uninstall some apps.
If I were to click on any app here and hold down it is just like iOS.
I see these X marks here next to apps that I can uninstall.
Now if the Mac App Store did not install the app the Mac is not sure exactly how to do
the uninstallation and there may be a custom uninstall application that you need to run.
So a X is not going to appear.
But for other things you are going to see the X.
Just simply click the X and it will uninstall the app from my Mac.
So uninstalling for a lot of apps is that easy.
So here is some little extra tips.
I've changed my background here to be the default Mavericks background because I want
to show you this.
Go into LaunchPad and it will blur the background there.
You can change the style of happens behind LaunchPad by using Control/Option/Command
and the B key and you can cycle through and you get a clear desktop, you've got an extra
blurred one, you've got a black and white one, and a blurred black and white one.
You can go back to the blurred one.
So you can cycle through and find out which one of those you like the best.
Also, notice here when I hold down the Option key I automatically get the wiggle and the
X's so you can do it like iOS where you click and hold and wait or you can just simply hold
the Option key down to do it.