The latest MPU episode with Brett Terpstra and Christopher Gamblée-Wallencheck got me thinking again about Stephen’s Raycast exploration. He mentioned a couple times that he was considering checking it out, but couldn’t get it to stick. Over the last couple months, I’ve become a heavy Raycast user. Some of those reasons relate quite closely to the latest episode’s discussion.
With that in mind, I thought I’d share some of the ways I’m using Raycast, in case it might benefit someone struggling to get more out of it, or wanting to check out what it can do.
Hyperkey
Karabiner Elements was mentioned in the last episode as a way to get Hyperkey functionality. Raycast does this and I use it all the time. I set up the Hyperkey to open all of my most used applications and common tasks. For example
- Hyperkey + D opens Dia, my current browser
- Hyperkey + N opens Quick Capture in Drafts to take a quick note
- Hyperkey + T opens Quick Entry in Things for quick task creation
- Hyperkey + A opens my current AI app of choice (It’s Claude right now.)
- Hyperkey + V opens Raycast’s clipboard manager (V because I’m pasting from there)
- Hyperkey + C opens my menu bar calendar (Dot)
- Hyperkey + F toggles a Raycast Focus session (this blocks several apps and starts a timer)
- Hyperkey + B opens Bloom (I’ve been using this instead of Finder lately.)
Search Menus
Paletro was mentioned as well. I tried it for a while and loved it. Then I realized I could do the same thing with Raycast. The “search menu” function allows you to search the current app’s menu and choose an item quickly.
I set this up with an “Alias,” which means I can just type a couple characters in Raycast (sm, in this case), and bring up “search menu” as the top result.
Window Management
Raycast’s window management features are surprisingly robust. Now I have hotkeys set to do almost anything I would need to do with a window. I tried so many apps, and could never get one to work the way my brain worked. For some reason, Raycast worked for me when the others didn’t.
Text Snippets
Pretty much all of my text expansion goes through Raycast now. Creation is quick and easy, and they have a number of variables that make snippets robust and customizable.
Hotkeys
Finally, pretty much anything you can do in Raycast, you can set up a hotkey for. I’ve done this for:
- getting two-factor authentication codes through Proton Authenticator
- searching and activating Keyboard Maestro macros
- pulling up the emoji picker (much faster than the built in one)
- doing a thesaurus search on the selected word
- activating all my window management commands
Anyway, I hope this was helpful. And if you have anything you’re using Raycast for that wasn’t mentioned here, I’d love to hear about it.