In macOS Sequoia, the App Store app has the option to “Download and install large apps to a separate disk”. When the user accesses Launchpad, apps downloaded to that external storage appear with all the other apps, no additional effort required.
However, I’ve discovered that manually adding apps to that external storage does not have the same effect: if I download an app and put it in the same external-storage folder as the App Store apps, it doesn’t automatically appear in Launchpad. If, however, I add an alias to the internal-storage /Applications folder, then it does appear in Launchpad.
Creating a sym-link at ~/Applications that points to /Volumes/Applications/ doesn’t have the same effect, which is a shame because that’d save me the effort of making an alias every time I download an app I want to store there.
Anyway, all of this leads me to believe that macOS is using some other method (maybe a plist?) to keep track of which apps have been installed to that external storage. Does anyone know what that method is or have an idea on how to go about figuring that out?
