Liftoff
The Launchpad that macOS 26 took away — back, faster, and with live window previews.
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Download Liftoff.zip
·
brew install --cask firstfu/tap/liftoff
[!NOTE]
Liftoff needs macOS 26 or later. It is not notarized by Apple yet, so macOS blocks the first launch: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway once (steps). All the code is here, and what each permission is used for is spelled out below.
Why Liftoff
macOS 26 replaced the classic Launchpad grid with the "Apps" list. If you liked the grid — pages, folders, drag to rearrange, type to search — Liftoff gives it back, built from scratch for macOS 26 and held to hard performance limits: it opens in under 3 ms, never drops a frame while paging, and uses 0% CPU when idle.
Then it adds what the original never had.
Features
Live window previews
Rest the pointer on a running app (or press Space on it) and its windows appear as thumbnails. Click one to jump straight to that window — minimized windows and windows on other desktops included.
Search that finds apps and windows
Type a few letters. Liftoff matches app names, initials (vsc → Visual Studio Code), pinyin for Chinese names, and the titles of your open windows.
Smart Organize
One click sorts your whole app collection into sensible folders — Developer Tools, Documents & Office, Media, Utilities… You see a full preview first, nothing changes until you press Apply, and your current layout is backed up automatically.
It works from a built-in table of 1,000+ popular Mac apps (including apps popular in China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan), not from guesses: no AI, no network, the same result every time. Missing an app? It's one line in AppCategories.json — pull requests welcome.
And more
- Drag an app to the Dock straight from the grid — the panel gets out of the way automatically
- Import your old Launchpad layout, or start fresh with Smart Organize
- Open it any way you like: hotkey (⌃⌘L by default), thumb-and-three-finger pinch, a hot corner, the Dock icon, or
open liftoff://toggle
- Pages, folders (drag to merge), drag to reorder, keyboard navigation
- Blurred or sharp wallpaper (blurred uses the least power), live blur, built-in gradients and solid colors, or your own image; adjustable icon size, label size and colors
- Multi-display aware · hide apps · uninstall apps with leftovers · back up and restore your layout
- 13 languages, following your system language
Performance
Measured on a real Mac by the app itself (scripts/selftest.sh reproduces the numbers on yours):
| |
|---|
| Open the panel | < 3 ms |
| Search, per keystroke | < 8 ms |
| Paging | 0 dropped frames |
| Idle | 0% CPU |
Privacy
Liftoff doesn't collect or send any data about you. Window thumbnails are captured and shown locally and never leave your Mac.
The only network connection it makes is for updates: once a week it reads the update feed on GitHub Pages and, if there's a new version, downloads it from GitHub Releases. Turn off Check for updates weekly in Settings and Liftoff won't go online unless you click Check for Updates….
Don't take my word for it: the code that uses each permission is in Liftoff/Preview (Screen Recording: thumbnails; Accessibility: listing and switching windows) and Liftoff/Services (hotkey, hot corner, trackpad gesture, and the update check in UpdateChecker.swift). Little Snitch or LuLu will confirm it too.
A note on private APIs
Two features use undocumented macOS APIs, both loaded dynamically with a fallback — if the symbols disappear the feature turns itself off instead of crashing:
Install
Homebrew (a personal tap): brew install --cask firstfu/tap/liftoff
Or download manually:
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
