Not sure how but I am stuck with unwanted and remnants from deleted apps in Launchpad. I was annoyed and I thought it’d be an easy deletion but found that it is not quite easy task after all. Here are few ways to delete them:

1) Delete using Launchpad Jiggle mode: Once you found the application you want to delete, hold its icon for few secs and all icons on the screen begin to jiggle. Every application icon, should get an “x” button on the upper-left side of it. Simply click on the “x” and confirmation dialog box should appear. Press Delete on that dialog box and app will get deleted from your Mac permanently.

If you “x” does not appear, the application no longer is installed on the Machine, please proceed to below set of instructions.

2) Delete using Terminal: Apple stores pretty much most of the preferences in sqllite db files hence you can use sqllite3 commands to manipulate these files from command line. So bring up Terminal, and run the following command to find the app you want to delete.

dhcp-16-206:OSApps sumana$ sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db “select * from apps” | grep -i vnc

108|VNC Viewer|com.realvnc.vncviewer|||370886537.0|book?

Note down, the appname, i.e., word highlighted above in red.

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db “DELETE from apps WHERE title=’VNC Viewer’;” && killall Dock

Keep in mind, appnames are case sensitive so make sure to enter the string as is. That’s it. Reopen LaunchPad and check if app you wanted to be gone is REALLY gone 🙂