What's all this on the launchpad?

[kenppy]

My machine has been running slower for some time and I've been looking to see what's causing this.
Looked at the launchpad and was surprised to see five pages, never looked past the first one and frankly never realised that there was more than one page.

What is all this stuff here, those icons that appear the same? Where did this come from and is it needed?

 

[grahamperrin]

Use Disk Utility to verify the startup volume then, in a Terminal window, run the following command (be prepared to enter your admin password, when prompted):

sudo mdutil -a -E

mdutil(1) Mac OS X Manual Page

After indexes are rebuilt, you may find a more normal collection of apps in Launchpad.

In the meantime, you need not worry about the unexpected appearances; they're harmless.

 

[kenppy]

Well I ran this, took about 15min, and restarted the machine -- it did nothing. If it's not a problem then I'll leave it but it just looks untidy.

 

[kryten2]

Well I ran this, took about 15min, and restarted the machine -- it did nothing. If it's not a problem then I'll leave it but it just looks untidy.

You can try this if you're running OS X El Capitan or Yosemite:

Open the Terminal application and enter the following defaults write command string:

defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall Dock

Hit return and wait for the Dock to relaunch and Launchpad to reset.