launchpad icon

What dialabrain said.

But I have to ask: WHY?

Are you clicking the Launchpad icon in the Dock to lauch Launchpad, to launch an application????

That is convoluted. Why not one of these:

1) Click the Dock icon of the application you want; or

2) Press F4 or whatever key in your keyboard starts Launchpad?

(FWIW, Launchpad and the Dock are two features of macOS that I never use - Spotlight is so much faster to launch applications)

Drag it from the Applications folder into the Dock.

dialabrain has already explained how. See his post above.

BailieBea wrote:

I lost the launchpad icon from the dock. I would like it back. How do I do that?

Do you not know how to drag and drop files?