As I said, it’s not a perfect replacement, but take some time setting up the folders and tweaking the settings and I think you’ll find it works well. And you can’t complain about the price.
some other options
Now, there are some other options to keep in mind. Apple added a new “Applications” button to the Dock, which opens Spotlight in the “Applications” section. This is an alphabetical list of your apps from both your Mac and iPhone, which you can scroll through or search for. You can hide iPhone apps if you want; Just click on the three dots in the top right corner and you will see that option. It works quite well, although the lack of folders, and the missing full screen option, are the main reasons you might not want it.
Another option is to drag the “Applications” folder from your Finder to the bottom of your Dock. Click on this folder and you can scroll through all your applications. If you want to organize applications you can also organize them into actual folders using the Finder. This is a bit of a workaround, but it’s worth a try if you don’t want to install any third party software.
Speaking of third-party software: LaunchNext is another popular Launchpad alternative, which can import your folders and settings specifically from Launchpad. The problem is that you can’t use it without working with macOS security settings, something I generally don’t recommend doing. I also found the LaunchNext a touch slow. Still, if you’re a power user it’s worth a look, as it’s far more customizable than Launchy.
There are also some options that bring back the actual Launchpad applications from older versions of macOS, but they require a lot of hacking and tend to break with macOS updates – I couldn’t find a single option that was working at the time I was writing this. Even if that changes, you’re probably better off using one of the above approaches – it will be more consistent.
It’s understandable if you’re unhappy that Apple removed your favorite feature, but at least there are alternatives. Make some efforts. One of them is bound to work for you.