I felt like giving my mess of Launchpad icons a fresh start. So I did
defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true && killall Dock
On checking Launchpad, it had appeared to have reset itself to default layout. Then to stop it resetting again on every reboot, I did
com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool false
It's always worked in the past but now I've discovered that no applications in /Applications/Utilities appear in Launchpad anymore. Terminal, Activity Monitor, AppleScript Editor and all the rest are missing:
The ones you see here actually reside in just /Applications. But Utilities are supposed to populate here amongst them.
The problem is persisting across users and also when I create new users. I find that very odd in and of itself because I did not use sudo or otherwise elevate the commands I used to set the ResetLaunchpad flag.
Basically, I don't want to have to drag the apps in /Applications/Utilities to the Launchpad icon and then manually organise them back into Launchpad's "Other" folder every time I create a new user.
Any ideas how I might be able to get Launchpad to behave normally again? Thanks! I'm using OS X 10.9.5.
Best Answer
I don't know if this is a related cause and the potential fix but I was able to get the issue resolved for me.
I use Homebrew Cask and I have it setup to symlink the applications from my Homebrew Cask directory into my /Applications/ folder (the default is ~/Applications).
The solution for me was to remove all of the Symlinks (I just moved them to my desktop) and then I ran the terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall DockAfter doing this my Utilities folder showed back up and when I moved the symlinks back into my Applications folder everything was back to normal.
If you do have symlinks in your /Applications/ directory or maybe even aliases it's probably worth giving this process a try.
Hope that helps.