Delete Unwanted Windows Apps from Launch Pad with VMWare Fusion

VMWare Fusion has an option to “Run Windows Apps from your Mac’s Applications folder”. This option also integrates with Launch Pad. When playing around with turning this on and off, I got into a situation where there were leftover Windows app icons that Fusion refused to delete.

It turns out that part of the Fusion magic is to put entries into the SQLite database that Dock.app uses to decide what to show in Lanch Pad. You can use the sqlite3 editor at the command-line in terminal to edit the database.

Heres’ the list of columns:

item_id|title|bundleid|storeid|category_id|moddate|bookmark

The sqlite3 command-line app lets you execute arbitrary SQL statements against a SQLite database. In my case, I had turned off the app integration feature with Launch Pad but had stray icons. Here’s a terminal SQL command to clear out any stray magic VMware Fusion virtual icons.

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock
sqlite3 *.db “delete from apps where bundleid like ‘com.vmware.proxyApp.%’;”
sqlite3 *.db ‘delete from apps where bundleid like “com.vmware.proxyApp.%”;’
killall Dock

The killall command will cause Dock.app to restart. And after restart, all VMWare induced Windows icons will be gone from Launch Pad.