I have been a heavy launcher user for as long as I can remember. I used Alfred 3 then 4 for years, upgraded to Alfred 5, and then jumped over to Raycast right after it came out. After using Raycast for years, I recently upgraded to Raycast 2, but something about it just did not click for me anymore. I was not a fan of the vibe, and the heavy push toward AI features in every search felt like unnecessary clutter since I do not use Raycast AI at all.
I had actually been thinking about this for a while and started taking notes during my workday to document what I was actually using Raycast for. It turns out my daily needs are surprisingly straightforward: launching apps, doing quick calculations, checking clipboard history, quickly liking songs on Spotify, searching in Apple Notes, and triggering web searches for sites like YouTube and Google.
Then I saw Stephen Robles’ video about moving from Raycast back to Spotlight, and that was the final push I needed to actually make the switch.
I realized almost all of my habits could be recreated natively inside macOS. I spent a little time working in Shortcuts to rebuild those workflows. With a bit of help from ChatGPT to write and tweak a few custom shortcuts, I got everything working directly inside Spotlight.
To my surprise, it works brilliantly (so far). Right now, there is absolutely nothing from my Raycast setup that I am missing.
As a side note, living in the EU means I do not have access to Apple Intelligence or the newer Siri AI features due to the regulatory situation between Apple and the EU. Even without any built in AI features, native Spotlight combined with custom Shortcuts is serving me remarkably well.
I was about to do that but then tried Tinycast (it’s called Thunderstorm in Droppy). It can do everything that I need from Raycast Pro for free and so I am sticking with it for the time being.
I like that it has window management, AI and floating notes.
Bought the Alfred PowerPack years and years ago and have never looked back. It remains fast and useful and there is no AI push. Every 6 months or so I create a new workflow to solve some problem.
I’ve tried to use Shortcuts to solve problems but except for cases where I can find no other solution, it is generally slower and clunkier than using Alfred. Shortcuts still feels like a 3rd party tool clinging to an OS that doesn’t really want it there.
I’ve mostly done it and it’s been mostly fine until shortcuts many bugs come to the fore. I have a couple of workflows that involve selecting items from menus. If I close (e.g. Esc key) the menu without completing the workflow I’m unable to use that shortcut again from spotlight until something internal times out.
I’m persisting with it because my work device is locked down in a way that makes something Alfred less convenient, but Apple really need to do something about how unstable shortcuts can be.
No, just the functionality from my extensions. I mainly use it to launch apps. One extension I rebuilt lets me ‘like’ the song I’m currently listening to on Spotify.
