OS X — Change the Number of Icons Per Row/Column in Launchpad

I personally don’t use Launchpad, which is designed to make it easier to manage your apps iOS-style. Instead, I prefer to use Spotlight or the Dock to launch whatever I may need at the moment, but I know that some people swear by it. The default grid is a 7×5 array of icons, with the options of putting them in folders. This can be changed.

Change the Grid

To change the numbers of items per row and/or column, you need to:

Launch Terminal.

Type in the following command in one line:

defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-columns -int X;defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-rows -int Y;defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool TRUE;killall Dock

Please note the X and Y in the commands above. These need to be changed to numerical values, eg. 10 and 8, as per the example below.

defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-columns -int 10;defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-rows -int 8;defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool TRUE;killall Dock

The above command change the look of Launchpad from the header example to the one below:

You can of course choose almost any number for X and Y.

Revert to Defaults

If you would like to return to the default settings, please use the 7 and 5 as the values for X and Y:

defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-columns -int 7;defaults write com.apple.dock springboard-rows -int 5;defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool TRUE;killall Dock

Have fun!