I’m going to start with - I’ve never been a mac person. I installed Redhat 7.2 in early high school, and have basically been using a dual-boot linux/windows (or just linux) ever since. I was quite into games in high school and university, hence the dual boot, and have always wanted to configure my system how I wanted it to run. Which is why I always disliked macs.
But recently, I got a work windows machine in 2022, and windows is just… so bad. It has bitlocker and I honestly probably should have just used my work time to break company IT policy and figure out the dual-boot, but I never did. I regretted not switching to a mac then, honestly. But now with my new role starting Gumnut, development is easier if we just do it on a mac, so that’s what I got.
So - I installed Raycast.
I’m not exaggerating that it’s the biggest change to how I use computers ever since I first got the hang of i3. It’s just so good.
What even is a Raycast?
Good question! On the surface, it’s a Spotlight replacement. A launcher to launch applications. It’s so much more than that, but that’s what it is. If you have a mac, you should probably just install Raycast.
Here’s the deal with Raycast, and why it kind of changes the game in terms of my computer use. Raycast takes all those “side mission” tasks, and means you never have to leave what you’re doing, in order to do it.
Doing a website and need to look for a font? You can get the font, and the string to paste, inside Raycast. Got a text about a meeting? You can make the calendar event in Raycast. Need to find something in some screenshot you took sometime? Search your screenshots through Raycast. Need to upload a file and get a URL? Upload it and get the URL through Raycast. Need to create/edit a ticket in Linear/Jira/whatever? Just do it through Raycast… and the list goes on.
The thing about side missions, it’s not just the mission, but all the the things you can distract yourself by going to the browser, and oh while I’m here I’ll just open Youtube because of muscle memory. Oh there’s a new Stuff Made Here video, click! 👀
With Raycast, you should ultimately never have to leave the thing you’re doing to do some side-mission task. You can just open Raycast, do the thing in a few keystrokes, and boom, back to what you were doing, without leaving and getting distracted. That’s why it’s so good.
I haven’t gotten there yet but the idea of never having to context switch is totally wild.
My favourite things so far
I’m not claiming to be an expert on Raycast. I’m sure there are things that are in each of these things that I’m doing in a dumb way. But I’m learning.
Shortcuts and alias
A cool thing about Raycast is that you can set global hotkeys to run any raycast command. A command could be opening an application, but anything you do in Raycast is a command. I’m sure we’ll go through that, but what I use it for really, is opening applications. Go figure.
How I do this, is there are so many keyboard modifiers on the bloody mac. fn, ⌃, ⌥ ⇧ and ⌘… but they all do things. So whaddya do, you make a NEW hotkey! Enter the HYPER KEY (✦), which is bascially holding all of ⌃⌥⇧⌘ at once. I have mapped it to caps lock and it does a thing where if you hold caps lock, it is the hyper key, but if you tap it, caps lock works as you would expect. I’ve only had 2 times when caps lock was on when I didn’t expect it in a few weeks, which I would call fine.
Anyway, so what are my shortcuts? In i3 I would have different apps open on different windows and then press Alt+num to go to the right one. Alt+1 would be my browser, Alt+2 would be my code editor, etc.
In Raycast, I actually use the window management a lot less, and just directly open the app I need with a hotkey. It’s very fast. Here’s a list of my custom shortcuts.
✦+bopen my browser (I’m using Arc at the moment, but I might switch back to Chromium, it’s just more comfortable)✦+eopen my editor (Cursor)✦+topen my terminal (Ghostty)✦+sopen Signal.✦+nopen Notion✦+copen my calendar (Notion calendar)
… you get the idea. ✦+letter is just the letter of the app of either the app, or describes what that thing is. It’s so easy. I’ve haven’t gone too deep on the global shortcuts, but these are really good for now.
You can also write an alias for any command. I also have cal for my calendar, but since I made ✦+C … and I just type cal when I open Raycast. I haven’t used the alias feature much yet, maybe I’ll add it as a shortcut to commands instead of just opening apps. When I chat more I might make C like Slack or Discord or whatever we end up using for work.
Snippets
Snippets are pre-saved text that you can save in a snippet, and you can name them, and insert variables it can paste directly into the focused window. It’s so good. Write the same email all the time? One thing I’ve found useful is inserting lots of useful things like my address, ABN, email addresses (I have a few emails and can shortcut inserting them).
The best thing is I don’t need to open Raycast to insert them. For example in any app I just type !abn and it turns into my ABN. Just !email and it replaces that text with my email. It’s so good! 😎
I basically took most of these snippets which has a whole bunch of handy snippets you can just import and use.
Inserting maths symbols or arrows or whatever is simply !x for × or !shrug for ¯\_(ツ)\_/¯
Clipboard history
I have used a clipboard manager which stores clipboard history. Raycast’s one is good, too. You can search it and filter by things like text, images, links, files and colours. I like that. On the free version which I have, it’s not unlimited. Only lasts 30 days, but you can pay for stuff like this.
Search screenshots
The ability to search screenshots is not something I’ve ever had before. It’ll OCR the text in the screenshot, it seems, and you can search that. You can also search by date or name. I haven’t done that yet, but I just tried date:last week and it showed me the screenshots just from last week. This is cool. There is so much about Raycast that you discover as you use it. This is so bloody handy, and stops me re-screenshotting so much stuff.
Calculator
The calculator in Raycast is great! It does normal calcuations but also does unit conversions, and lots of handy stuff.
Window management
The free version of Raycast just has window management. The paid version enables you to name different layouts, so if you have a few different multi-monitor layout, you could switch between them using a hotkey. If I find that I need that, I might even consider paying for it. But… not yet.
What I do use, is just a bunch of hotkeys to layout my screen. I just use the Rectangle shortcuts so I didn’t have to configure them, I just learned another configuration instead of coming up with it myself.
It’s basically ⌃⌥ + [thing] to do something. So ⌃⌥ + ← is to move to the left-hand half, same with →. ⌃⌥ + return makes it fullscreen.
Typing Practice
Surprisingly handy. Honestly my typing skills have gotten worse over the last few years. In Raycast it’s so easy to just do a quick typing practice, I do it every day.
Extensions
Extensions can be installed from the Raycast store, and add functionality of other applications to be able to perform those actions in Raycast. You can install extensions for all kinds of apps to control them from Raycast, but these are the ones I use most.
Extensions - ScreenOCR
This is an extension, what it does is say you have some text that is in a video, or in a screenshot/image and you really want to copy it. You can select an area and it’ll OCR the area and put it straight on your clipboard. I bound this to a hotkey so ✦+o does an OCR of an area. I use it all the time.
You can choose to include the line breaks as shown in the screenshot, or trim them, which is nice.
Extension - List repos
Lists the github repos on your machine, and opens it in your editor, in the root directory. No need to go to your editor and do that, or navigate in your terminal and then open your project, it just… does it… straight away. It’s so good.
Wrap up
There are a bunch of features that I have, but don’t really use that often. Like QuickLinks and stuff like that. They do look real handy, but I’m just learning as I go.
Hopefully some of this is useful, please get in touch if you have any Raycast tips that I am absolutely missing out on.