Liftoff
The Launchpad grid macOS 26 took away, now with previews
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This is 1 of 99 launches in macOS desktop utilities and launchers — see how it stacks up on momentum and crowding →
319 other launches read as similar to this one →
Details
- External ID
- 1269955
- Source
- PH
- Company
- —
- Product
- Liftoff
- Website domain
- producthunt.com
- Launched
- Oct. 5, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 1
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.33
- Tags
- Productivity, Open Source, GitHub
Description
macOS 26 replaced the Launchpad grid with an Apps list. Liftoff brings the grid back: pages, folders, drag to rearrange, type to search. It opens in under 3 ms and uses 0% CPU when idle. Rest the pointer on a running app to see live thumbnails of its windows, and let Smart Organize sort your apps into folders in one click. Free, open source (GPLv3), no network access. macOS 26+.
Enrichment
- Niche
- macOS desktop utilities and launchers
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Workflow automation
- Audience
- Prosumer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- classic launchpad replacement with app previews for macos
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Building a native macOS app with sub-3ms launch, window thumbnail generation via private CoreGraphics/Accessibility APIs, and low-level system integration requires deep macOS systems programming.
What it would actually take: A native Swift/Objective-C app using the ScreenCaptureKit or private CGWindowListCopyWindowImage APIs to fetch live window previews, AppKit for fluid high-framerate grid UI, and launch services for app enumeration. The hard parts are achieving sub-3ms launch times, zero idle CPU consumption, robust inter-process window capturing without triggering heavy permission lag, and private API reverse engineering for window hierarchy on macOS.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 319 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #174 of 320 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 323 days after the earliest competitor.
- Launchie 1.6.1 · ph · 2026-09-20 · 104 upvotes · similarity 0.74
- Liftoff · github · 2026-10-01 · 28 upvotes · similarity 0.73
- ModusPad · ph · 2026-09-29 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.71
- IconPane · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.67
- StartPad - A Launchpad for Windows · ph · 2026-09-16 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.57
- ArcPad · ph · 2026-10-10 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.54
- Switchover · ph · 2026-09-22 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- TinyFolder · ph · 2026-10-04 · 74 upvotes · similarity 0.49
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.