Also called: autovacuum launcher process, av launcher
In plain English
The autovacuum launcher is the background process that schedules vacuuming. It wakes on autovacuum_naptime, decides which databases need attention, and dispatches per-database autovacuum workers that actually run VACUUM and ANALYZE on tables with enough dead tuples or stale statistics.
Why it matters
It is the engine that keeps bloat and transaction-ID wraparound in check without manual intervention. autovacuum_max_workers caps how many tables can be processed at once, and autovacuum_naptime sets how often the launcher checks — both critical on high-churn workloads.