Raycast

Years ago I installed Alfred on my laptop, but never really took the time to learn how to best use it. Consequently, I didn’t use it much and never really saw the need for such a tool. I recently got a new laptop and decided to research some new apps on Reddit and saw that Alfred was still mentioned a lot as a “must-have” for many people. I noticed there was also a newer, similar search and app launcher named Raycast that was getting mentioned a lot and, in fact, seemed to be more popular than the older Alfred.

But, I decided to give Alfred a shot again since I had some familiarity with it and didn’t feel like I gave it a fair shake years ago. And even though it’s been around a very long time, there are still a lot of people who swear by it, claiming it’s the first thing they install on any new computer they get. But after downloading it and using it for a bit my experience was similar to when I tried it before: cool, but a little underwhelming. I didn’t see many benefits over the built-in Spotlight search and app launcher. It seemed like much of the useful functionality was locked up in the Powerpack, which you had to pay for. I’m not against paying for great software, but before I moved forward and bought Alfred, I thought I’d give Raycast a shot.

I downloaded and installed Raycast and at first wasn’t that impressed. I thought it was great that most of the features were available in the free version, which includes things like clipboard history, snippets, and extensions. The free version of Alfred doesn’t include any of that. But navigating through the search results felt a little clunky, at least when compared to Alfred. I stuck with it and after a day or so, it clicked started to become second nature.

I don’t want to do a complete tutorial or review of Raycast because there are a bunch of those online already (e.g., The Basics). Instead I figured I’d point out a few of the simple things I’m using it for on a daily basis.

I have a few Quicklinks configured to open some frequently-used folders (e.g., Downloads, Documents) with a hotkey and to also search frequently-used websites like Amazon, Wikipedia, IMDB, etc. I created a hotkey to open Raycast’s clipboard history viewer, which is a lot more helpful than I thought it would be (I’d never used a clipboard manager before). I also have a hotkey to toggle Raycast’s floating notes window, which again is really useful for jotting down quick, temporary notes.

I have a few Snippets created, but the one I use the most is for my e-mail address. If you’re not familiar with Snippets, they automatically replace a short keyword you type with some other text. For example, you could set things up so when you type @e it will replace those two characters with your full e-mail address. You can create Snippets for anything that’s hard or annoying to type and it’ll same you some keystrokes.

Lastly, I installed a few helpful Extensions: Brew, Goodreads, Obsidian, and System Monitor are the ones I use the most. I’m also using many of the built-in Extensions like System Settings and Window Management. Extensions are free and easy to install and it seems like new ones are being built all the time.

I’ve been using Raycast nearly every day for a couple months and I really like it. It has definitely made a lot of things easier and includes functionality you find in like 10 separate apps. If you have a Mac and want to make your life a little easier, check it out.