Guide: How to fix Mac Launchpad Layout Not Saving (Works!)

Important: I am not affiliated with any of the manufacturers, brands, services, or websites listed on this page and this is my personal experience.  If you find this helpful and want to say thanks, please buy me a coffee or take a look at my book on Amazon. It keeps this page ad-free. Thank you!

Disclaimer: I do not provide technical support, accept liability or offer a warranty. If this doesn’t work, experience issues, or somehow break something, that’s on you not me. That all said, this is a non-technical fix and is easy to do. It should take you less than 5 minutes from start to finish.

Background

macOS Monterey 12.0.1 has a Launchpad bug where it doesn’t save your icon layout. The macOS Launchpad bug seems very random, may not occur across user accounts, or even other Macs running the same version of Monterey. Making troubleshooting a pain. It’s also a frustrating bug if you’re a bit obsessive-compulsive like me and really need your folders organized a certain way to maximize productivity.

If you’re experiencing the macOS Launchpad layout bug, what happens is anytime you restart your Mac, the launchpad icons will not remember their position and instead, the icons are randomly rearranged. Apps do seem to stay in folders, it’s just that the order of the app icons in Launchpad is random on every restart.

If your macOS Launchpad icons are rearranging themselves, this will fix it. It’s an easy fix and I hope that in future versions of macOS Apple will fix the issue.

This has been tested and works on an M1 Macbook Air running Monterey 12.01. It should work on other Macs (Apple Silicon and Intel-based Macs).

How to fix Mac Launchpad Layout Not Saving

First, the good news. You do not need to reinstall macOS or wipe your hard disk. Doing these steps will fix the macOS Launchpad app icon layout bug, but it will require you to reorganize all your macOS Launchpad app icons one last time. From start to finish, it should take under 5minutes.

  1. Start a macOS terminal window.
  2. Enter the following macOS terminal command.
defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock

Note: This command fully resets your macOS launchpad. This means everything will be reset to default. It will remove apps from folders. This means you have to spend some time reorganizing everything, but trust me, it’s an important step because it resets the Launchpad database and sets you up for success.

  1. Shut down your Mac. I recommend, a proper shutdown, not a restart.
  2. Wait 3-5 seconds then start your Mac.
  3. On the restart, login and rearrange your macOS Launchpad App icons to your desired preference (order, folders, etc.)
  4. Log out of your account. I am going to emphasize, “Log out” – don’t shut down, restart, or sleep. Just log out.
  5. Log back in – your macOS Launchpad icons should still be in the same position.
  6. Shut down your Mac.
  7. Restart – your macOS Launchpad icons should be in the same position!
  8. You’re done!
Why I think this works.

The terminal command resets Launchpad and the macOS Launchpad database. This is helpful if you have rogue apps that may have left ghost icons, etc. After you log out, it commits the change to the Launchpad database. If I was to guess, there’s a bug in macOS Monterey that doesn’t write to the Launchpad database on shutdown but it does on Log Out.

If you’re after more posts I have written about the Mac and macOS, you can check out this link. I document various macOS bug fixes, hacks and. tweaks to make macOS better. I also list my favorite free macOS apps.

Important: I am not affiliated with any of the manufacturers, brands, services, or websites listed on this page and this is my personal experience.  If you find this helpful and want to say thanks, please buy me a coffee or take a look at my book on Amazon. It keeps this page ad-free. Thank you!

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