Launchpad icons keep rearranging

Kai2343 Said:

"Launchpad icons keep rearranging: Hi, Recently i've noticed that my Launchpad on macOS Catalina 10.15.7 has been rearranging itself on startup. How do i fix this?"

-------

Reinstall the macOS:

Nothing would be deleted. It's just that items that have become corrupted or deleted, would be replaced or reinstalled back to where they should be. Go Here: How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - Apple Support. Important:Be certain to create a backup of your Mac prior to all of this. That way, you can have something to restore from the Mac from, should anything go wrong with the reinstall.

Time Machine Backup:

Important: Prior to the reinstallation, Create a Time Machine Backup of your Mac, so that you can have something to restore your Mac from, should anything go wrong, doing the install

Welcome, Kai2343!

From your post, it sounds like you are experiencing an issue with the way icons in the LaunchPad are arranged when you restart your Mac. We’re glad that you reached out to the Apple Support Communities. We want to try and help you find the answers you need.

Does the problem happen every time you restart the Mac? Does the issue happen with a specific user? If you do not have an alternate user, you may need to create one to test with. Here's more information on that process: Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac.

Also, check out this guide with information on how to Use Launchpad on your Mac. You can also follow these steps to Use Launchpad to view and open apps on Mac. We hope this information helps you out.

All the best.

I don't think you need to reinstall the whole OS, at least not until there is more information to understand what is going on.

Please run Etrecheck and post its full report here. Use the "additional text" button and paste the report into the text box.

You should uninstall the symantec stuff. This is utter **** and is not giving any protection, and causing your mac to underperform, and actually diminishes security.

Effective defenses against malware and other threats

I am not familiar with the configuration profiles mentioned. Do you recognize these?

Configuration Profiles:
  com.microsoft.office - OfficeAutoSignIn
  com.microsoft.office - OfficeActivationEmailAddress
  com.microsoft.autoupdate2 - HowToCheck
  com.microsoft.autoupdate2 - AcknowledgedDataCollectionPolicy

I have office as part of a 365 license from my employer, and I have not seen this. Maybe this is appropriate with some sort of corporate license, I don't know. Certainly not for a home mac.

You also do not need any third party disk drivers:

    [Not Loaded] SamsungPortableSSDDriver.kext - com.samsung.portablessd.driver (1.5.05 - SDK 10.10)

And finally: "public VPN are anything ** private". If you are using a third party vpn service to "protect" you online, don't. You are handing over your data to them.

 [Not Loaded] ProtonVPNStarter (ProtonVPN AG - installed 2021-03-19)
    Modern Login Item
    /Applications/ProtonVPN.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/ProtonVPNStarter.app

Kai2343 Said:

"Alright. Why do I have to reinstall the entire operating system if it only happens with 1 user and not both”

———-

About Reinstalling:

Upon Authoring my reply, I didn’t see your reply about a second user. Had I have seen that, my reply would have been a bit different.