Over on Windows, I've talked a lot about Flow Launcher, which is still one of the best ways to boost your productivity on that platform. On macOS, I haven't felt as much of a need to install something like this because Spotlight is actually pretty good. But after my colleague Adam Conway wrote about Alfred, I heard about Raycast, and I had to give it a go.

Raycast is a productivity tool that's very similar to Flow Launcher. It's a search bar similar to Spotlight, but it's extensible by hundreds of extensions that take everything to the next level. Whatever it is you want to do on your Mac, Raycast helps you do it faster, and in just a short time, it's replaced Spotlight for me almost entirely. Here's why you should check it out.

Quick access to everything

It's already great out of the box

Even before we get into any of the extra extensions, Raycast is an incredibly powerful tool out of the box. Some of the more basic extensions include your clipboard history, which has basically replaced Pasty for me. Raycast makes it easy to not only open your clipboard history, but also makes it instantly searchable, so you can find the exact content you need to use at any given time.

Of course, Raycast can launch your apps just like Spotlight, but in some ways, it's even better. I already really like how Spotlight makes it easy to convert units and copy the final number, but Raycast makes it even easier. Simply pressing Enter when looking at a conversion will copy the final conversion to your clipboard.

Raycast also provides certain system controls that you don't get with Spotlight. One thing I always missed was the ability to quickly put my Mac to sleep or shut it down using the keyboard, but Raycast can do that easily just like Flow Launcher on Windows. It can change you system volume by simply typing in a percentage, for example. And that's all just the beginning.

Finding extensions is easy

The built-in store feels just like it should

An app like Raycast lives and dies by its extensibility, and in the case of Raycast, this is an absolute win. Raycast has a huge library of extensions available through its dedicated store, and what's so great is hown easy it is to actually find these extensions and install them. Raycast has a dedicated extension store, but it's all built into the search bar itself. It may seem limiting, but it works perfectly for what it's trying to achieve.

Simply open the store by searching for it, and start scrolling down the suggestions to see dozens upon dozens of great extensions. You can easily perform searches, and selecting an extension takes you to a preview page where you can quickly see screenshots of the extension in action and a short description of what it does.

In this regard, Raycast is even better than Flow Launcher on Windows. That platform also has its own store, but it's kind of separated from the main search UI, and you can't really preview extensions within the app. Raycast handles this perfectly.

Tons of extensions to play with

There's just so much

Of course, it also helps that Raycast has a huge library of fantastic extensions available on its store, making this your go-to tool for... well, almost anything. Obviously, I can't try every single extension out there, but there's so much I find useful already.

A pair of extensions I love is the YouTube and YouTube Downloader combo. One lets you easily search for videos and channels on YouTube, and the other lets you download selected videos using their URL. Setting up YouTube Downloader was frustrating because I didn't have yt-dlp and a few other necessary components, but I eventually got it working, and it's pretty great now.

I can also quickly access Apple Notes for my quick notes, or OneNote for the longer form ones. The OneNote extension is pretty nice because it actually lets you preview the content of a note directly within Raycast, and you can choose if you need to actually open it or not.

In fact, I've noticed Raycast does this with many of its extensions, and it works wonderfully. Another great showcase for this was the Pokédex extension, which I was expecting to be similar to the one available for Flow Launcher. But no, the Pokédex in Raycast actually shows you a lot of information about a given Pokémon right within the Raycast UI, which will no doubt come in handy when I have another new Pokémon game to play.

Other functions I like are the ability to search for emoji (Apple's emoji picker isn't very reliable), search for GIFs, or translate text with Google Translate. But trust me, this is just the tip of the iceberg, I've seen extensions for Slack, Jira, Obsidian, Spotify, and so much more. There's just a ton.

It's highly customizable

It's your tool, after all

Raycast is also amazing for how customizable its behavior is, and in this regard, it's actually way better than Flow Launcher. At first, it may seem a bit more clunky because all your extensions are just shown as search results and you have to select them first, but once you dive into the settings, it changes everything.

For starters, Raycast extensions aren't like Flow Launcher, where a single command brings up the entire list of options for that extension. Here, an extension can register multiple commands, and you can either search for the action, or set an alias, which is basically a prefix that automatically triggers a command. For example, the YouTube extension lets me separately search videos or channels, and those two things are separate commands, and I can set separate aliases for them so I always perform the search I want quickly. Unlike Flow Launcher, none of these aliases are really set up by default, but setting them up is fairly easy.

But that's not all of it just yet, because Raycast also supports hotkeys. Some functions you may just not want to have to search for every time, and a keyboard shortcut is the best way to do it. For me, for example, I make it so that the emoji picker or clipboard history are easily accessible with the same shortcuts I use on Windows. Hotkeys skip the need to open the search bar or type anything — just press the keys, and you're using the command you want.

There's so much flexibility in how Raycast can work to speed things up, and it's awesome.

It's free

Well, mostly

Arguably the best part about Raycast is the price, or the lack thereof. Raycast is free to use, with a couple of exceptions that, in my opinion, don't really matter much. Raycast Pro, which costs $8 per month (billed annually) adds AI functionality, the ability to sync your settings, and theme customization, along with some other small things.

Syncing your settings would definitely be a great feature to have, but realistically, how many Macs do most people actively use at any given time? And themes are also nice to have, but definitely optional for most people. It seems to me like the biggest selling point here would be AI, but I also don't care about that.

The core features of Raycast are completely free, and personally, I see very little reason to pay up.

Raycast changes the game

I can't overstate how much Raycast has impressed me during this early hands-on period I've had with it. I do feel like macOS needs this less than Windows does, but Raycast still blows Spotlight out of the water in every way. It's so easy to use and so incredibly capable that I think absolutely everyone should consider installing it on their Mac.

To make things even better, the team is apparently working on Raycast for Windows, too, and I can't wait to see it there as well. You can join the waitlist for Windows, but if you're on a Mac, absolutely download Raycast right now. It's amazing.