Appearance

Appearance controls how LaunchNext looks, moves, and feels in daily use.

Tune in this order

1. Set structure first: Icons per row, Rows per page, and Folder Layout
2. Set readability: Icon size, Label font size, and label weight
3. Set spacing: horizontal and vertical spacing
4. Set motion: animation duration and scroll sensitivity
5. Set finishing details: folder window size, indicator position, and mask style

Behavior toggles

• Classic Launchpad (Fullscreen)
• Show labels under icons
• Use localized app names
• Predict drop position
• Enable slide animation
• Follow-scroll paging
• Hide Dock
• Hide menu bar in fullscreen
• Remember last opened page
• Hover magnification
• Press feedback
• High-resolution folder previews
• Folder Quick Launch
• Use image background
• Window open/close animation
• Background mask

Notes:

• Predict drop position and Follow-scroll paging are disabled when the Core Animation renderer is active.
• Slide animation duration is disabled if animations are off or if the Core Animation renderer is active.
• Folder Quick Launch is available only while the Core Animation renderer is on. The Compatibility Engine forces that renderer off.
• Hide menu bar in fullscreen is only available in fullscreen mode.
• When Hide menu bar in fullscreen is active, LaunchNext also hides the Dock because macOS requires the Dock to be hidden when the menu bar is hidden.

Background and theme

• Choose Background style: Blur or Liquid glass
• Enable Background mask and configure separate Light/Dark colors with opacity

Image background

Use image background puts a picture behind the grid instead of the blurred desktop. Background source decides where that picture comes from.

• Desktop wallpaper: LaunchNext follows the wallpaper of the display it opens on. A static wallpaper is captured once and reused on later opens; dynamic and aerial wallpapers are re-captured each time. Changing your wallpaper produces a new capture automatically.
• Custom image: pick a file with Choose Image…, and replace it later with Change….

If a custom image is moved, renamed, or deleted, the row shows Image unavailable. Pick the file again to restore it.

Photos with detail behind the icon labels are the main reason to also turn on Background mask — the mask is what keeps labels readable.

Layout and readability controls

• Icon size
• Icons per row
• Rows per page
• Horizontal spacing
• Vertical spacing
• Label font size
• Icon label weight

Changing grid dimensions can reposition icons. This is expected.

Folder controls

Folder layout

Folder Layout controls how apps are displayed after opening a folder.

• Paged: folder contents use pages and a page indicator, matching the main Launchpad feel.
• Vertical Scroll: folder contents scroll vertically, and the folder title scrolls/fades with the content so large folders stay compact.

When the Core Animation renderer is active, folder grids also use Core Animation for smoother paging, scrolling, drag reorder, and drag-out behavior.

Folder window width/height

These controls are for compact mode. Classic fullscreen uses a fixed folder window shape.

Folder drop zone size

Smaller values reduce accidental folder creation while dragging icons.

Folder Quick Launch

Folder Quick Launch starts an app inside a folder without opening the folder first. Right-click a folder and its apps are listed in the context menu directly.

• Off by default.
• Requires the Core Animation renderer. The toggle is greyed out whenever that renderer is off, and switching to the Compatibility Engine turns it off automatically.
• Inside a folder, right-click an app to pin it to the top of that folder's quick-launch list. Pinned apps are grouped above the rest.
• A pin belongs to one folder, not to the app. Moving the app to another folder, hiding it, or uninstalling it clears the pin.
• LaunchNext records no launch counts, open times, or usage history. Order comes from your layout and your pins, nothing else.
• Pins are saved as part of the folder layout, so they survive backups and JSON import/export.

Motion controls

• Slide animation duration: paging animation inside the grid, 0.10s to 1.00s
• Window animation duration: how long LaunchNext takes to appear and disappear, 0.10s to 0.50s, default 0.25s
• Scrolling sensitivity
• Hover magnification scale (only when hover magnification is enabled)
• Press scale (only when press feedback is enabled)

The two durations are different things: Slide animation duration is paging inside LaunchNext, Window animation duration is the window itself. The window one is disabled when Window open/close animation is off.

Page indicator placement

Global controls:

• Page indicator spacing
• Page indicator top padding

Per-display mode:

• Enable Per-display indicator position
• Set different values for each connected display
• Re-apply defaults for the current display if needed

Practical preset suggestions

Dense laptop setup

• Higher icons-per-row
• Medium icon size
• Tighter spacing
• Paged folders for predictable keyboard and page navigation

Comfort desktop setup

• Medium icons-per-row
• Larger icon size
• More spacing
• Vertical Scroll folders if you keep many apps in the same folder