OK so if you’re like me you use a single install of Chrome in the OS to manage multiple Google accounts – the User Menu or ‘user management’ menu.

For whatever reason. For reasons beyond my comprehension. For reasons I’m sure no one at Apple even expected or has noticed, simply accessing another Google account from within Chrome adds Drive, Gmail, and YouTube icons to your operating system’s Launchpad:

Why Apple? WHY?!??!!?

Why Apple? WHY?!??!!?

The thoughtful ways to delete these icons do not work. You cannot long-press to wiggle-delete, you cannot drag them to the trash. You have to do the following:

Go to Finder,

Hit shift+cmd+G and the ‘Go to Folder’ prompt will appear,

Type (or better yet copy+pasta)
~/Applications/Chrome Apps.localized
and hit Enter

There are the icons you want to delete:

icons_chromeapps

Delete the ones you want gone, then empty the trash to make them actually disappear from Launchpad.

I’m sure this is one of those Chrome blames Apple, Apple blames Chrome – but ultimately it’s up to the OS to not let this happen.