Sindre Sorhus is the prolific Mac dev behind several popular apps like Supercharge.
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Interesting to see this pattern repeat, an app goes cross-platform/Electron to grow faster, and the Mac-native crowd starts looking for the next thing. Feels like it’s happening across a bunch of categories lately, not just launchers. Curious whether Tinycast stays this lean once it has to compete on feature parity, or whether that’s the trade-off that eventually pushes every app down the same road.
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I am puzzled. Raycast users generally strike me as power users who like many of the features Raycaast offers.
Are there really that many users who are so averse to Electron that they are wiling to give up such a rich feature set?
Or is does Tinycast actually have a very different market - those who only use a very basic subset of Raycast features and therefore prefer something that is free?
I can’t speak for everyone but for me electron is not the issue. For me the issue is that the app is inflating the price because of AI. Those who don’t care about AI are subsidizing those that do. 
It feels like all features that are coming are to increase ROI rather than the actual value of the software.
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They did add a higher-priced AI plan.
But they still have a free non-AI plan. As best I can tell the free non-AI Raycast plan is more capable than Tinycast.
What am I missing?
A rich feature set is not necessarily a good thing. It can be a distraction, both for the user who frequently has to see things he hasn’t subscribed to, and the for the developer whose time must be spent on maintaining the extra features rather than the core experience.
Sometimes people say “Electron bad” even though Electron is not the primary culprit. They want a simple way to describe a bloated app which has gone against their interests. It’s (not) a coincidence that many such apps are built with Electron.
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An Electron application’s look and feel can never truly match a native app built with Xcode, as it does not adhere to Apple’s design guidelines. Furthermore, there is the issue of file size: if all my apps were built on Electron, I would quickly need significantly more storage—and storage is expensive these days.
The major advantage for developers of Electron applications is that they can easily built for multiple platforms at once. While this benefits the developer, it often turns out disadvantageous for the user.
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Raycast is 138 Mb. That’s a big deal?
The major advantage for developers of Electron applications is that they can easily built for multiple platforms at once. While this benefits the developer, it often turns out disadvantageous for the user.
It that results in a larger user base then it makes it more probable the app can survive long-term with sufficient support staff - that is in everyone’s interest.
You really think a smaller feature set is desirable?
Don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned in the forum yet; V6 is coming soon 
:
I do. I think that 10 tools which do one thing really well are far better than 1 tool which is unlikely to do those 10 things as well as all 10 separate tools.
I’m exaggerating to make a point, but a dev who focuses on that one thing, is more likely (not guaranteed) to make it better than the feature where a Dev or devs have split focus.
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It’s becoming more and more clear, if you look at Raycast’s changelog over the past 3 months+, there is a lean toward AI-specific features over others. Yes, there is a higher-priced plan, and there is a free plan, but the aim of Raycast is primarily AI. You can see that in their pricing page for Pro. You can also see that with their side projects like Glaze. They really care about AI. And that comes at a cost.
As a user I have to decide if I’m willing to use, and put my effort and learning into, the software that I know is being developed for things I don’t care about. And if the free plan is too limiting and I need Cloud Sync (for instance), I’m paying them $96/yr for that one feature. Knowing that paying them isn’t helping to develop more features that I want, but rather to develop AI workflows.
So yes, they offer free plans and I could use their software without paying money, but I’m paying with my time, testing, knowledge, and that locks me further into their ecosystem of launchers. So I don’t find it crazy to explore alternatives and make sure that Raycast is still the best launcher when there are other options out there.
I think it’s similar to the number of people trying Linux. Apple’s software direction shows a pattern and there are a lot of people who don’t like where it appears they are going. So they explore and see if it’s still best to be putting effort into macOS, or if it could be better directed elsewhere.
I don’t think Raycast as a company is bad. But I also don’t think they align with what I value in my launcher so it’s made me write them off for now.
According to Raycast’s May 14, 2026 post, A Technical Deep Dive Into the New Raycast, Electron was one of the technologies they considered, but not the one they went with. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
To put it simply, we needed to make sure we were in control of every part of the stack and could easily fall back to native where needed. Electron isn’t the best choice for that.
I use a combination of Alfred and Raycast, as each has its own strengths. At some point I’ll probably choose one over the other, but for now the combination works well.
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Tinycast supports AI too. Tinycast does NOT support sync.
So where is the benefit of Tinycast over Raycast?
I don’t support Tinycast. Just trying to explain it from a person who doesn’t support Raycast. I also have no issue supporting AI but when the majority of features and changes are AI-related it clearly is going in the wrong direction [for me].
I do. I moved away from Obsidian because (1) I use no third party plugins, and (2) the CodeMirror Live Preview editor was (and still is) always glitchy. It seemed clear to me that the Obsidian devs didn’t care to (or was unable to) make the editing experience on par with native.
That power (in the sens of having more features) is always desirable is typical dev thinking. It’s often not user thinking.
And what did you move to?
Some background to Sindre Sorhus’s switch. This thread on r/macapps is not happy about recent changes by Raycast: https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1wfi93v/raycast_is_deleting_posts_with_negative_feedback/
I’ll start this post with the reasons why people are not happy with Raycast at the moment. Post examples will be at the bottom.
In case you don’t know, Raycast has received quite a lot of backlash with their recent changes.
- Firstly, people are not happy with their transition away from being a native macOS app and transition towards another AI wrapper. v2 uses more memory, is slower and in general feels more sluggish, partly due to not being native. Not great for an app that needs to be always available.
- Secondly, with the release of v2, they put BYOK behind a Pro subscription. This means if you want to use your own AI API keys with Raycast, you need to pay them a subscription. This was a free features in v1, and the team was advocating for it being free back then.
- Thirdly, they changed their subscription model related to AI. They previously had fixed rate limits, meaning you could send 300 messages per hour to some models. Now, they have introduced “AI Credits”. Long story short with this, people are using up their entire monthly limit in just a single day, myself included. They also screwed over existing annual subscribers that had subscribed to Raycast with the old limits. The reddit post about this has 35 upvotes and 339 comments. The slack announcement post about this also has the most replies ever on their community. People are not happy.
- Then they sent out an email titled “Making things right for existing annual subscribers”, which was a complete joke. They basically did nothing, just gave a little more AI Credits until people’s annual subscriptions are up. The reddit post has 0 upvotes and 51 comments, with no one being happy about this.
Someone made a post sharing their feelings about the changes. The post had 142 upvotes in just 1 day, making it among the top 25 posts of all time in the subreddit. There were other posts, but unfortunately I don’t have links to them. Someone also shared an alternative to Raycast with some thoughts related to the changes, and it was also deleted. That post was deleted within 60 minutes (on a sunday), with it already having 34 upvotes. The subreddit has some other posts up, with users saying the new pricing model is a robbery because they used their monthly credits in 2 days, comparing the new plans to Apple’s product naming, renaming the product to “Paycast”, and if people can use their own keyboard with Raycast without paying for a subscription (joke related to Raycast releasing a keyboard).
Along with those posts, some of the Raycast teams’ now deleted tweets about the backlash to the pricing changes are very rude and weird. I won’t be naming names here though.
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That is very helpful to know (though disappointing) - thank you. That is a whole lot more concerning than “I don’t like AI” or “I don’t like Electron.” Those are profound unforced errors for an established software company.
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