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How to Get The Most from Raycast
Mac Apps
As I enter my third year using Raycast, I'm still impressed with the sheer volume of use cases into which it fits. I’ve been using a keyboard driven application launcher since 2006. For the majority of that time, I was a devout Launchbar fan. installing it on Mac after Mac and dutifully paying for the infrequent upgrades. When I initially heard about Raycast, I wasn’t interested, but the uproar just kept getting louder. Tech bloggers and Reddit sang its praises and kept pointing out new features one after another. I finally relented and downloaded it. Having also tried Quicksilver back in the day and Alfred, I can honestly say that I was surprised at what I could do with Raycast.
The Apps It Replaced
Free extensions and built in Raycast features eliminated the need for a whole list of utilities I previously used.
- Raycast's built in clipboard manager along with extensions like Append Clipboard replaced Pastepal (which is an excellent app in its own right)
- Auto Quit App, much improved from when first implemented, replaced Quitter.
- While not exactly a replacement, Brew is more useful and easier to use than the CLI for Homebrew.
- Clean Keyboard replaced Cleanup Buddy
- Color Picker replaced Color Slurp
- The Image Modification extension eliminated the need to fire up apps like Acorn or ToyViewer for making simple changes to images such as resizing and file type conversion.
- Timers provides an easy way to do what I used to do with Timix
- Weather works great and it replaced Meteorologist
- Speedtest can be run whenever I need it without having to open an app like Speediness.
Added Functionality
The other side of Raycast's versatility is its ability to provide access to your application stack's functions without you having to open the app and navigate to the feature you want to use. Here are some examples:
- Amphetamine - start a new session, stop a session, get remaining time and more - Raycast Extension
- BetterDisplay - manage displays - Raycast Extension
- BetterTouchTool - run actions and triggers - https://raycast.com/dnnsmnstrr/bettertouchtool
- CleanShotX - access almost any feature straight from Raycast - Raycast Extension
- Day One - add entry - Raycast Extension
- Drafts - more than a dozen actions - Raycast Extension
- Dropover - add to Dropover - Raycast Extension
- Fantastical - add reminders and events - Raycast Extension
- iTerm2 -multiple features, including AI - Raycast Extension
- Keyboard Maestro - list macros - Raycast Extension
- Apple Music - play anything, volume, start, stop, shuffle and more - Raycast Extension
- Obsidian - create note from clipboard - Raycast Extension
- Raindrop.io - access your Raindrop bookmarks - Raycast Extension
- Houdahspot - search with Houdahspot - Raycast Extension
- Shortcuts - search and open any shortcut - Raycast Extension
- Vivaldi -bookmarks, history, tabs, windows - Raycast Extension
- Tailscale - multiple functions - Raycast Extension
- Things 3 - add tasks and projects, see lists - Raycast Extension