Complaints about the Start menu on Windows 11 are a dime a dozen, and most of them are warranted. But whether you're using Windows, macOS, or even Linux, your way of opening apps is probably not as good as it could be. It's all thanks to Raycast, the application launcher that I legitimately hate to live without nowadays.

The Windows version of Raycast is still only in beta, but it already has everything I care about, and I legitimately have no interest in using the Start menu anymore. And thankfully, the developers even make it easy to outright replace the Start menu.

Raycast is so much faster

Open apps in a flash

The Start menu on Windows 11 is notorious for slowing down a lot of workflows, even if you just stick to using the keyboard. The search bar can be unreliable and slow to respond to what you type, so it's very easy to inadvertently open something you didn't mean to. In many cases, that thing could even be Microsoft Edge and you end up searching for something on Bing.

I've mentioned it a dozen times, but Raycast is a completely different beast. At any point, you can just bring it up with a keyboard shortcut and start typing instantly to get to what you need. Any app on your system can instantly be found this way, but so can certain system settings, like shutting down the computer or putting it to sleep, and even setting the volume. Raycast responds instantly to everything and it's very versatile. Not only that, but you can also customize all the shortcuts, creating aliases or hotkeys that can immediately launch an app with a specific key combination or shorthand term. Once you develop the perfect flow, Raycast allows you to work so much more efficiently, and it's frankly changed how I use my PC.

Extensions take it to the next level

Some of my favorite Windows features, and much more

Simply launching apps more quickly is already a good enough reason to ditch the Start menu in favor of Raycast, but that's far from the end of it. I mentioned how Raycast can also change certain system settings, and that's thanks to a built-in extension that gives it those features. But extensions for Raycast go far beyond that.

For starters, there are a few more built-in extensions, with two of my favorites being the emoji picker and the clipboard history. These are two features Windows already offers out of the box, but as I've mentioned before, Raycast makes them so much faster and easier to use, especially the clipboard history. It saves my clipboard for far longer, and it includes things like images, too, so it's far more reliable when I need it.

But even that is only scratching the surface of what you can do with Raycast extensions. One of the extensions I rely on the most is the YouTube one, allowing me to search videos and channels at a moment's notice from the unified search bar. Then, I use a downloader extension to download those files to my PC, which comes in handy when I'm trying to use clips of existing videos in my own. File converters are an important extension for me, too, and so are things like file search. But all of that is still a minute fraction of what's available. Integrations with Slack, OneNote, Obsidian, Home Assistant and more are all available, and you can create an incredibly useful productivity hub this way.

Replacing the Start menu

Who needs it?

Typically, Raycast is summoned using a keyboard shortcut such as Ctrl + Space or Alt + Space, but you can assign it to anything you want. And even though the Windows key is usually reserved for the Start menu, Raycast actually lets you use it, too.

I've tested it, and it's surprisingly reliable at both summoning and dismissing Raycast without the Start menu getting in the way or glitching out. It makes it so that even if you don't want to learn any new shortcuts, replacing the Start menu is easy for just about anyone.

It's not just Windows, either

Raycast is on all my PCs

I've mostly been talking about Windows so far, but really, Raycast has become the centerpiece of every computer I have. The Windows beta is incredibly useful, but I found Raycast first on macOS, and it's just as great there. The macOS version has even more extensions and even supports some local AI functionality, though I don't care much about that last part.

And even on Linux, where Raycast doesn't exist officially, I use an open-source project called Vicinae that aims to recreate it, and does a surprisingly great job of it. Not everything works quite as well, but the app launcher and extensions like the emoji panel and clipboard history work and they're incredibly useful on Linux. You can technically install almost any extension from the macOS version, though how well they function on Linux can be hit or miss. Still, the core of it is there, and even though Linux has a lot of launchers, Vicinae immediately became my favorite.

Raycast is so good

I have not been able to stop singing the praises of Raycast ever since I started using it on my Mac, and I installed it on my Windows PC as soon as I had the option to do so. It's replaced the Start menu on Windows, but also the built-in launchers on every other OS I use, and I can't recommend it enough. You can (and should) check it out below.