Yesterday I did a clean install of Mac OS Lion, and installed bunch of apps, including HipChat Desktop Application (an Adobe AIR app). I used it for some time and eventually closed it.

Today I wanted to start it again, but couldn't find it in Launchpad. I looked in /Applications folder, but I couldn't find it there either (I still don't have ~/Applications).

I went back to HipChat website (from where I installed) and a Flash plugin allowed me to run the app immediately. It shows up in my Dock and if I "keep it" there, I can launch it again (it still doesn't appear in my /Applications dir). However, it asks me for confirmation about launching an app that has been downloaded from the Internet (every time I start it, it's annoying). I also see the app in Adobe AIR uninstaller.

I then went to my old Snow Leopard installation and found HipChat in my /Applications folder there. Copied it to the Lion disk and it works. Now I have two HipChat entries in Adobe AIR uninstaller.

I guess I solved the issue at hand, but I still don't understand where the original app is located and how I can access it and move it to Applications.

I couldn't find it anywhere with both Finder search nor find command in terminal (I used $find / -name "HipChat*" -print).

So, how does Adobe AIR store the installed applications (on OSX Lion) and is there any way to get them to show up in Launchpad?


In order to find out the location of an application in the Dock, hold down the command ⌘ key and click (don't hold) on the icon. It will be revealed in Finder.

  • Thanks for the tip! :) Unfortunately I already fixed the problem by reinstalling Flash and AIR and the app now installs into the proper location. I'll mark this as accepted, but I can't actually verify if it would work for the problem at hand. – Damir Zekić Mar 19 '12 at 12:41

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