When I first bought a MacBook, I came across Alfred: an app launcher to replace Apple's Spotlight. What I liked the most was:
- Opening apps with just a keystroke (e.g.: "s" opened Spotify)
- Looking stuff up online and searching files on my computer
- Searching all of my bookmarks and opening them
When I first heard of Raycast. I was curious, but skeptical. I downloaded it and tried it out. The product felt a bit undercooked:
- It opened up files when I wanted to open browser bookmarks
- File search felt slower and less assertive than Alfred
Even if my first experience with Raycast wasn't convincing, I definitely saw the potential. It felt slick and modern, it just didn't fit my use case.
Disclaimer: I didn't take the time to configure Raycast as I had done with Alfred. In that sense, it was a bit unfair to expect Raycast's default to behave exactly as I desired.
Still, out-of-the-box (OOTB) behavior plays a huge role on migrating to/from a similar tool. Most users won't have the patience to configure the new tool and will give up migrating altogether.
I recently decided to give Raycast a second try. Spoiler: I no longer use Alfred. In this article I will explain why I came back, what I love and what I wish would change.
Why I Tried it Again
What brought me back was @peduarte, a Software Engineer at Raycast, asking me in an X thread what I thought Alfred did better.
After reading through my feedback, he invited me to join Slack and become a beta tester. This showed me Raycast excels at community and convinced me to try it again.
What I Love
User Interface and Experience
First off, something that Raycast is impeccable at: UI + UX. The user feedback, the subtle animations, how they embraced keyboard-first. It felt seamless to customize and the onboarding was amazing.
Uninstalling other Apps
Uninstalling apps always feels good. And opting for Raycast's implementation often resulted in a better experience. Some applications that I chopped off in favor of using Raycast's own Extensions:
Extensions and More Extensions!
This is the soul of Raycast. Here is what I use the most:
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Spotify Controls: I use "sp" to Play/Pause and "sa" and "sd" for the Next/Previous Track. These are better than the native keyboard controls because they don't conflict with other players (such as accidentally pausing a Youtube video instead of a Spotify track).
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Google Chrome: one feature makes this extension for me: Search Tabs. Even if Chrome is minimized, I can access specific tabs in seconds. A common use case is to go from VS Code straight into ChatGPT. Or open my WhatsApp tab from anywhere.
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Google Translate: I'm currently travelling around Europe and the possibility of translating a sentence from/into any number of languages is unbelievably handy.
What I Wish Would Change
Snippets and Text Replacements
I have been using MacOS Text Replacement for a long time. Mostly for contact information, for example: "myemail" replaces into "lukeberrypi@gmail.com". Super handy.
Unfortunately, Raycast Snippets break on X and WhatsApp, two of my most used websites. They also don't work on VS Code.
For now, I will stick to the native Text Replacements.
Disable Fuzzy Search for Emojis
When I used Rocket, there was an option to enable/disable fuzzy search. This would be a great addition to Raycast Emojis exntension, as it is currently impossible to disable it.
Browser Agnostic Bookmarks
Question: if you bookmark "google.com" in Safari and Google Chrome is your default web browser, where do you expect the bookmark to open when accessing it via a launcher?
Alfred opens it in Google Chrome and Raycast opens it in Safari. I much prefer the former. An "Always Open in Default Browser" toggle would also be amazing.
Navigating with Escape
In Raycast, esc goes back to the previous page. I wish I could configure this to the more universal cmd + [ and cmd + ], which I've grown used to. And an option for esc to close the entire Raycast app would be amazing.
Using "fn" as a Modifier Key
It is impossible to setup hotkeys for Raycast using the "globe/fn" key. This would be a nice addition since using cmd and ctrl often leads to conflicting hotkeys between different apps.
Conclusion
Raycast is phenomenal. Huge shout out to @peduarte and the team for developing such an impressive, all-encompassing application.
As with any software, there are improvement points, but I wouldn't write about it to this length if I didn't love it! Try it out yourself (MacOS only).