It’s Annoying How Good Raycast is

I can check my schedule and join my next meeting, control my music, and even choose where it plays, and run everything in my smart home, all without ever leaving this free Spotlight replacement called Raycast. But that's

just the beginning, because there's a huge amount of extensions that you can install with just a single click. And

what's wild is that a lot of the best stuff comes built in. You don't even need to install anything, like a built-in clipboard manager that saves everything you copy to your clipboard

like text, links, files, images, and even videos. And if you remember even a

even videos. And if you remember even a single word, Raycast finds it instantly even text inside images. And you can then press enter to paste it. And for

those things that you're always going back to copy and paste, you can turn those into snippets, which is Raycast's built-in text replacement tool. Just

give it a name, type the content, and set a keyword to trigger it. And now, no matter where you are on your Mac, just type that keyword, and it expands instantly. And if you want to get fancy

instantly. And if you want to get fancy you can even add placeholders like the date, time, or custom fields that ask you for your input before pasting the full message, which is really handy to

reply to emails. And you can manage all of these from the snippets page inside Raycast. But if you want to launch this

Raycast. But if you want to launch this or really anything in Raycast faster then you've got two options. You can

either assign an alias, which is basically a shortcut word that tells Raycast what you're looking for, or and this is where it gets really powerful you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it, which bypasses the command bar

altogether. And by the way, you can do

altogether. And by the way, you can do this for any command, which is especially useful for window management so you can move and resize windows faster. There's a ton of options here

faster. There's a ton of options here but my most used ones are snap left snap right, maximize, and making it larger or smaller. And if you're wondering what the hell this diamond

icon is, that's a hyper key, which is when you take a key like caps lock and turn it into a kind of universal shortcut key. Behind the scenes, it acts

shortcut key. Behind the scenes, it acts like pressing command, option, control and shift all at once. But all you do is hit the caps lock key. And this combo is so rare that it's not going to conflict

with any other shortcut. And normally

you'd need a separate app to set this up, but we can do this right from raycast under advanced hyper key. But

one of my favorite features in Raycast is the calculator because this thing does everything. Percentages, dates

does everything. Percentages, dates time zones, currency, even unit conversions. Super useful. Raycast also

conversions. Super useful. Raycast also

pulls in your calendar and lets you glance at it by using the my schedule command, which I also have mapped to a hotkey. And what's cool is if a meeting

hotkey. And what's cool is if a meeting has a link, you can just hit enter and it joins it instantly. And if you've used Notion, Obsidian, or VS Code, you know that those apps have a command

pallet that gives you quick access to pretty much everything the app can do.

And Raycast brings that to any app using the search menu items command. And

what's happening under the hood here is that it's pulling in all the actions from the menu bar into a command pallet that you can search. This is especially useful in apps like Photoshop that have

a million settings that you can't easily access. And yep, this is also mapped to

access. And yep, this is also mapped to a hotkey. And this is yet another app

a hotkey. And this is yet another app that Raycast replaces. And we're still only on the native features. We haven't

even touched thirdparty extensions yet.

And you know when you're digging through a pile of screenshots trying to find the right one. With Raycast, if you remember

right one. With Raycast, if you remember even a single word inside the screenshot, you can search it using the search screenshots command and it'll find it. Okay, so now I'm going to rapid

find it. Okay, so now I'm going to rapid fire through a couple more native features before going into third party extensions. First is the emoji picker.

extensions. First is the emoji picker.

And this not only looks great, but it also includes a bunch of extra symbols like keyboard keys, arrows, and currency icons. There's also a built-in color

icons. There's also a built-in color picker. Just trigger it, click anywhere

picker. Just trigger it, click anywhere on the screen, and it's going to give you the hex code. They also have this feature called quick links, which lets you create shortcuts to pretty much anything folders files apps even

websites. I mostly use it to jump

websites. I mostly use it to jump straight into deep folders, but there's a lot more that you can do with it. And

last but not least, there's a built-in Pomodoro timer called Raycast Focus that also blocks apps or websites while you work. And when the time's up, you get a

work. And when the time's up, you get a chime and a really clean little animation. All right, so now let's get

animation. All right, so now let's get into the third party extensions that I use. The first one is the Apple Notes

use. The first one is the Apple Notes extension, and the standout feature here is how fast I can pull up my notes. I

have the letter N as an alias for it. So

I just type N, press space, and start searching. I also use similar extensions

searching. I also use similar extensions for Obsidian, and even for Google Drive.

I just type my alias for those and start searching right away. And if you use something like notion or bear, there are extensions for those as well. There's

also an extension for almost all password managers. I use one password

password managers. I use one password and I pull up my login straight from Raycast every day. And by the way, if you press command K on this or on any other item in Raycast, it's going to show you a bunch of actions that you can

do with it. And speaking of passwords if you use two factor codes, you can grab those straight from Raycast as well using the 2FA extension. And this works both for messages and email. And you

don't even have to copy. Just press

enter and it automatically pastes it. I

also use a few extensions for calendar and meetings. One of them starts a

and meetings. One of them starts a Google Meet instantly and copies the link to my clipboard. If you use Zoom or Teams, there are extensions for those as well. Another lets me easily create

well. Another lets me easily create calendar events using natural language.

And another shows me the time zones of family and colleagues. Raycast also

replaces a bunch of those tiny utility apps that I used to keep around, like this one that lets me switch my audio input and output, or this one that lets me manage my Bluetooth devices, and it even shows battery levels for Apple

products. There's also an extension that

products. There's also an extension that lets you uninstall any app straight from Raycast. And the best part is that you

Raycast. And the best part is that you can pick the uninstaller you want. I use

App Cleaner. It's what I've used for years, and now I can do it straight from Raycast. And there's also little stuff

Raycast. And there's also little stuff too, like this one that keeps my Mac awake, or this one that opens my last downloaded file. But Raycast doesn't

downloaded file. But Raycast doesn't just replace apps. It makes the ones you already use way better. Like this

Spotify extension that lets you control your music, start songs or playlists and run a ton of other commands. I also

use CleanShot X, which if you don't know, it's by far the best screenshot tool out there. And Raycast makes it even better. There's a ton of commands

even better. There's a ton of commands you can do with it, but the two I use the most is open history and restore recently closed. Very nice. I also use

recently closed. Very nice. I also use parcel, which tracks my deliveries, and flighty for my flights. And I can access both straight from raycast. Basically

if there's an app you use all the time there's probably a raycast extension for it. But one of my favorite extensions is

it. But one of my favorite extensions is the Home Assistant one, which lets you control every smart home device in your home straight from Raycast. This one is far too long to go into detail here, but I did send out a newsletter a couple

days ago talking specifically about this. If you want to check that out, the

this. If you want to check that out, the link is down there in the description.

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everything we've gone over so far is 100% free, but there's also two paid plans and this is where things get a little weird. The first one is called

little weird. The first one is called Raycast Pro and it gives you a few extra features. one of which is cloud sync so

features. one of which is cloud sync so your settings extensions snippets and everything else with some exceptions stays in sync across all your Macs. You

can still do this manually on the free plan by exporting your settings from Raycast on one Mac and importing them into Raycast on another but with the pro plan this happens automatically. You

also get a built-in translator which is nice but you can also just get the Google Translate extension. Clipboard

history also goes from being capped at 3 months to unlimited. And this one actually hurts a little because your clipboard history is stored locally. So

there's really no reason for this to be a paid feature. Not to mention, it used to be unlimited until they introduced the pro plan. You also get full window management capabilities, unlimited raycast notes, and the ability to choose

themes. But the main selling point seems

themes. But the main selling point seems to be AI. This includes not just chatting with different language models but also using AI powered commands inside some extensions. You can see which ones support this by going to the

extensions page and looking for commands labeled AI extensions. And to show you this in action, I can ask my calendar when is my next video going live and it should answer correctly. Or I can tell

notion to add something to a database straight from Raycast. I'll admit this is actually really cool and probably useful for a lot of people, just not really for me. And if you want to take it even further, there's a higher tier

called Raycast Pro plus advanced AI. And

the only difference here is that this one gives you access to more powerful language models across the board. And I

know at first glance this looks like a way better deal than paying for Chatt Plus or Google Gemini. You're getting

access to pretty much every major language model for less than what you'd pay for a single one. But it's not that simple. With Chatt Plus, you get a lot

simple. With Chatt Plus, you get a lot of important features that you're not going to get with Raycast. The most

important one for me is persistent chat history. This lets me stick with the

history. This lets me stick with the same project over time and pick up where I left off. Using it on Raycast is fast and it's deeply integrated with the Mac but unless I'm missing something, it seems to be built for quick one-off

tasks. So, for me, this isn't even close

tasks. So, for me, this isn't even close to a replacement. But if you're okay with that, then Raycast Pro might be worth it just for this. That's a lot you get for $8 a month. Plus, you're

supporting the continued development of what's genuinely one of the best tools on the Mac. But the thing is, I only started using Raycast earlier this year.

Before that, I was using Alfred and I used it for around 10 years. And there

were a few things that finally pushed me over. The first is that Raycast is under

over. The first is that Raycast is under constant development. There's always new

constant development. There's always new features coming out, which makes sense because Alfred is maintained by just a couple of people, while Raycast has a pretty big team and it's PC funded. This

also explains why the free version of Raycast is so generous. You get a ton out of the box, way more than Alfred.

I think you get more out of the free version of Raycast than you do from the paid version of Alfred, which by the way is a onetime payment of around $40.

But at the same time, it's that VC back growth mindset that has a lot of people worried about what could happen down the line, and I'll come back to this in a minute. Raycast also looks and feels

minute. Raycast also looks and feels like an app from 2025. Everything from

navigating the settings to managing extensions is super clean and modern.

Meanwhile, Alfred hasn't changed much from what it looked like 10 years ago.

And then there's the built-in store which is a huge win for Raycast. With

Alfred, you have to either dig through their gallery or download random workflows from GitHub. Not to mention the extension community is way more active on Raycast with new extensions

popping up all the time. Okay, so now here's where Alfred still wins. Starting

with speed, Alfred is just faster.

There's no debate about this. Most

actions take one less step, if not more compared to Raycast. If you want to search for a file in Raycast, you launch it, type search files, hit enter, and then you can start searching. That's

three steps. And even if you assign an alias like SF to get there faster, it's still three steps. With Alfred, you launch it, press space, and that's it.

Same with extensions. In Alfred, you type 2FA, and your code is right there.

In Raycast, you always have to select the extension first before anything else happens. Everything is always behind the

happens. Everything is always behind the menu. So unless you're willing to create

menu. So unless you're willing to create a shortcut for everything you want to do with Raycast, Alfred will always be a couple seconds faster. And if you use this a 100 times a day, those extra steps start to matter. The next big one

is cloud syncing. With Alfred, this is completely free. You just drop your

completely free. You just drop your settings folder into iCloud or Dropbox and it's going to sync across all your Macs. Raycast makes you pay for that. If

Macs. Raycast makes you pay for that. If

you want to sync your settings the easy way without manually exporting and importing between Macs, you'll need the Pro plan. And this leads me to my next

Pro plan. And this leads me to my next point, which is privacy. Because when

you use their pro plan, it syncs your data through their servers. That

includes your settings, snippets, notes and a bunch of other things. It's not

shady, and they're transparent about it but it does mean that more of your data flows through them. Alfred, on the other hand, is offline first. It stores

everything locally and only pings their servers to activate the license key. And

lastly, Alfred has been around for 15 years. They're not going anywhere.

years. They're not going anywhere.

They've had the same sustainable business model for years and it works.

As much as I like Raycast, we don't know what the future holds and we could very well see some form of inchification.

They already placed the cap on clipboard history from unlimited to 3 months. And

this is really just a cash grab as your clipboard is stored locally and doesn't sync with their servers. What if next it'll be a cap on how many snippets you can have or how many extensions you can install? These are things that just

install? These are things that just won't happen with Alfred. But even after all of that, I still think that Raycast is the better option. I don't love that it's VC funded, but that's just the nature of things. The truth is that

right now, this is the better product.

Its free version is insanely good. It

comes with amazing built-in features and the third party extensions work really well and are very stable. It also

keeps getting better every week, and they actually listen to the community which really matters. It's not perfect and yeah, when I first switch, taking that extra step for everything was annoying, but I got used to it, and in

return, I get a lot more out of it than I did with Alfred. Raycast replaces a ton of apps, but definitely not all of them. And if you want to check out the

them. And if you want to check out the other Mac apps that I still rely on then watch this video here, and I'll see you there.