Launchpad app icons keep moving

Using LaunchpadCleaner (LPC) -- which has a really sucky interface and very limited control over your LaunchPad really -- I was able to at ~LEAST~ know how OS X Lion was going to mess around with the icons... so with a combination of sheer GUESSING, LUCK and a terrible app UI, I was able to at least somewhat predict the outcome of swapping around icons in LaunchPad when it goes quirky.

For the sake of the argument beolow, let's call OS X's arrangement the SCREWY arrangement here, and what you actually see in LaunchPad as it is (before restarting and OS X scewing it up) the "LaunchPad" arrangement.

In LPC it shows me EXACTLY how OS X is going to move around my icons. In one case, I had two folders that were next to each other and kept switching places with each other. Incidentally, when I switched them to 'match' what OS X's screwy arrangement, they followed the intended arrangement that I wanted to see in the LaunchPad arrangement!!

So from there it was hit-n-miss. With the ~help~ of LPC, which has the ability to refresh the Launchpad itself and view the Screwy arrangement, I was dragging icons around, placing them in folders, removing them from the folders, until I ~FINALLY~ got pretty much the arrangement I wanted (without having to resort to a full-revert of the Launchpad... which is what I did awhile back and OBVIOUSLY everything still gets screwed up eventually).

The thing is... SOMETHING is causing LaunchPad to get screwed up. Here are my suspicions:

• Sophos Antivirus

• DropCopy

• Cocktail (via resetting permissions)

Sophos has screwed with me before (the version I'm using is the latest) when it totally messed up versioning and auto-save on Lion (and corrupted the original files too -- how nice). It might be screwing with me again.

DropCopy? Not sure, but I accidentally fired it up at the time I noticed the strange Launchpad behaviour.

Cocktail coz I was repairing permissions while arranging stuff in the Applications folder.

I think it was the arranging stuff in my apps folder that might have done it for me -- I started categorising my apps and putting them into folders. That's when the Launchpad started getting quirky -- with my added suspicions coming from those apps above.

If anyone can cross-check their Launchpad behaviour with these apps (do you HAVE any of these apps) and the act of moving stuff around in your Applications folder, perhaps we can draw our own conclusions on WHY Launcpad is acting up this way.

Then we can advise people what NOT to do...

I don't have any of the three applications that you mentioned, and I still have the problem of the Launchpad icons moving around.

Thanks, did you by any chance happen to repair permissions on your drive?

I've repaired permissions a few times.

OK, now it's getting interesting... I'd like to see how this might be related to repairing permissions. I'm going to do the following to confirm this:

1.) Reset Launchpad

2.) Play around with the icons and see if they retain their places

3.) Do this for a week

4.) Repair Permissions

5.) Play around with the icons and see if they retain their places

Would be interesting to know.

you do realize Steve Jobs was still alive and CEO when Lion was being designed?

If you put all of the apps in one page, they still rearange. So, in general, all of Launchpad is rearranged after each boot.

I tried that, and it doesn't work.

I have reinstalled from apple's servers and even done a full erase and restore of my computer. But since not many people seem to have this problem, I am guessing it is a particular file/app along with Lion that causes it. The problem is, which one?

If everyone had this problem I would say it's just a bug. PLEASE HELP US APPLE!!

MAY HAVE JUST FIXED THE PROBLEM!!!

As I mentioned already, I thought it could be a file interfering with it somehow, so I started deleting sketchy files (BT files, old stuff, etc). The next time I rebooted my computer, for the first time in months my apps were just how I left them!! I will report back if it starts happing again, but so far, after three reboots, they were all in the same spot.

Unfortunately for you guys, I deleted so many files that I can't tell you which one would have done it. But I recommend try this!!

Yes, a 3rd-party app would make a lot of sense as the culprit. Now, about which one...

Can you be any more specific about, if not the actual files, the kind of files you were targeting? e.g. do you mean deleting files from the login items, or from your apps folder or somewhere else?

I would assume something must be running for this to happen, so it wouldbe interesting if you could tell us what, if anything, you took out of your login items.

I am very sorry to announce that I was wrong. I got so excited because this is the first time that I have rebooted and all my apps were in the same place since the problem started happening in August. And it was perfect three times in a row, and then it just started doing it again. I am so sorry, and angry at my darn MacBook pro that is having many other issues as well. AAAAHHHHHHHHH.

If those 'many other issues' are all related to Lion, then try reinstalling from a fresh App store download. Do not use the recovery partition or a saved installer.app unless you have already had one proven successful install. Start afresh.

Took me five goes...my guess is with a 4GB download, at least some of the problems people are reporting with Lion are just down to corruption in the transfer.

JakeBLunsford wrote:

I am very sorry to announce that I was wrong. I got so excited because this is the first time that I have rebooted and all my apps were in the same place since the problem started happening in August. And it was perfect three times in a row, and then it just started doing it again. I am so sorry, and angry at my darn MacBook pro that is having many other issues as well. AAAAHHHHHHHHH.

Another old, dead thread bouncing back to the top again today. That's about 10 and half marked as resolved months ago.

If you have your own issues, perhaps consider opening your own thread and asking for assistance. When threads are so out of date and especially marked as resolved by the Original Poster, then few people are likely to even bother reading them.

Cheers