How to alter the appearance of Launchpad’s background

24 September, 2011 - Paul Dixon
Launchpad

While I rarely use OS X Lion’s iOS-inspired Launchpad – which gives you a full-screen view of all the apps on your Mac, I do like discovering hidden features. And it turns out that Launchpad has one that allows you to alter the appearance of the background picture.

By default, Launchpad displays a blurred out version of your desktop picture, but if you press Command+B you can remove the colour and/or the blur from the picture:

Default


Colour removed


Blur removed


Colour & blur removed

Obviously, not all desktop pictures will work well if you remove the blur – some may be too busy for the icons. If you like the look of the desktop picture used in the examples above, you can download it here.

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About the author

Paul Dixon is the owner of Macsessed. He lives in Lancashire in the UK where he works as a web designer. You can find him on and Twitter.