What makes Raycast special?

Software
10

This was one of the biggest muscle memory breaks I had to make between Alfred and Raycast. Raycast doesn’t expose anything without a modifier (alias / command). So you have to get into the habit of doing one of the following…

Looking for a file?

  1. Type search query: folder name → Select command to use: File Search
  2. Search for command: File Search → Type search query: file name

Looking for a contact?

  1. Type search query: name → Select command to use: Contacts
  2. Search for command: Contacts → Type search query: name

Where as with Alfred, you can have all of that exposed by default, so all you have to type is folder name or person's name and then you can immediately see what you’re looking for, and then tab to take action on it.

Raycast does work, but I do find the initial friction of remembering the reverse (more specific) order to be laborious at first. After I got used to it, it wasn’t quite as bad of a transition.

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11

After reading this post, I felt like Alfred’s UI was a bit old. But, I did remember that you can customize it and now Alfred looks slick and spam brand new.

Raycast doesn’t allow for this kind of customization and I’d really like to see this in the future.

Additionally, when you move the Raycast search window around, it doesn’t reset to the centre and I can’t find a setting for this. The window also doesn’t respond to centring window commands so, we’ll, not it is perpetually off centre for me…

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12

This prompted me to shorten it slightly for Raycast.

Route A:
I set a single space as the alias for file search.
Now, I launch Raycast, press space then return, simply space space, and I’m in file search.

Route B:
I set option-space as the hotkey for file search.
Now, I can get straight into that.

I still like Alfred’s fallback system better, but I might grow to prefer this.
I’ve also set Raycast to “Pop to root search” immediately, since I (think) I prefer always starting from scratch. Maybe I should give the default 90 second delay a chance though.

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13

Thanks to all the Alfred users on this thread for confirming why I don’t need to look at Raycast. Yet, at least.

People have been talking about the challenge of changing from something you’re used to. For me, the challenge still is making myself take advantage of all the features in Alfred, many, many years after I bought it. I’ve recently started relying on the clipboard manager again. I think I do this every few years or so. :laughing:

Now after reading the thread, I’m thinking it’s time to train my muscle memory to use Universal Actions regularly. I took a brief look when they launched but had forgotten about them!

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14

+1

…

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15

I think that’s a valid criticism. Although I have grown to love Raycast, it still needs to prove itself. Alfred, on the other hand, doesn’t.

As to the funding, I think because of the reasons I mentioned up top (especially because extensions are built in Typescript and React), any standard web dev today could build tons of custom tooling for their company using Raycast. I say this as someone who convinced my company to buy Keyboard Maestro for everyone on my team and has custom coded probably 25 admin tools for my team (this was one, FWIW: Custom HTML Prompt to search Zendesk Articles - #2 by Cpenned). The problem is that my code is mostly hacked together using random web technologies and KM actions, so you have to know KM and have access to my original files to update it. If I would have written these tools using Raycast, the custom apps would be available and alterable by nearly any web dev today. I built most of our tooling using my preferred web tooling, built the files, and then added them as custom HTML prompts in Keyboard Maestro. While powerful, that path obscures the source code and isn’t easy to alter without ME doing something—not a great selling point for a company. I’m getting into the weeds too much, but I think my original reasons up top (especially number 3) are the hope for the company-funded route. If companies can have web devs on their team quickly spin up tooling for their company in such a common dev stack, it might make an investment make sense.

Time will tell if Raycast will hang, but for now I’m excited about its future and direction.

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16

This is my exact approach! And pop to root is my preference, but maybe I’m not doing it right? :man_shrugging::joy:

17

Totally, fair. Alfred is the standout classic in my mind and already has support for nearly everything—either through native or community actions.

After interacting with all you great Alfred users today, my sense is if you’re getting into the launcher game today these are the choices that make the most sense:

  1. If you want your launcher to do nearly everything and be completely customizable, go with Alfred. It’s the standard for a reason.
  2. If you are a dev and want to write your own custom extensions and scripts or use custom extensions and scripts using modern tech stacks you already know and are comfortable with, go with Raycast. I already code daily and Raycast takes nearly zero effort to write my own powerful custom integrations. I’d love more customization, options, etc., but I’m more interested in a launcher I can make my own using tools I already know and love. And that’s why Raycast has connected so well with me.

You really can’t go wrong. And that’s the beauty of it. :smile:

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18

Admittedly I never got too far into Alfred, but for me I feel like the tech stack is the biggest deciding factor. Myself, I love Raycast’s support for powerful extensions with nice UIs from a React/TypeScript API. I also feel like Raycast is a lot less “entrenched” in the macOS power user community and is also open to expanding support across platforms in the future (this is not intended as a criticism of Alfred).

You can use the “Reset Raycast Window Position” command.

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19

Completely agree about the tech stack! I think that is the feature of Raycast. That definitely won’t and shouldn’t appeal to everyone, but I’m a huge fan for exactly that reason! :slight_smile:

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20

I should also add that publishing an extension to their store is a great process from a user perspective; their reviewers have a lot of useful feedback to improve the UI/UX of your extension and the back-and-forth during submission is fast and friendly :slight_smile:

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21

And I just found your github, saw your Timer extension, and downloaded it. Nice work! :slight_smile: Raycast is one extension better! :tada:

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22

Great post @Cpenned

I think Raycast is great, but I would shed some light from my perspective.

Alfred has this. You can press Tab on the command / action / file / folder that you are triggering and it will show these commands. Not a lot of people know this.

Alfred also has universal actions. If you are on a file or a piece of text or URL, can you perform 100s of actions on it. My shortcut is double tap Shift key and, these 100s of actions show up. It’s system wide. This replaced so many apps for me.

I think this is where Alfred shines. You can write a script in any editor you want, and just trigger it from Alfred workflow. You don’t have to fiddle with the UI. Although I do think the UI is very powerful, maybe not for you since you are in getting your hands dirty. But the advantage of that UI is that non-coders can also make workflows for themselves, which isn’t that easy with Raycast

Again, Alfred has great advantage here. You can use React and Typescript, but also use Python, Go, Ruby, shell etc to make workflows.

Most importantly, Alfred is made by a team of 2 people (maybe 3 max) in contrast to Raycast, which is a bunch of people (15-20 the last time i checked a few months ago).

Alfred does not market their feature well enough. That does not mean they are not well documented, they are. But their feature promotion isn’t that good, so most people don’t know about 70% of the features. Raycast is good with this with brand promotions and website sponsorships etc.

Alfred focuses on customer privacy and does not have any interest in VC money and unlike Raycast, which is free, but that is too good to be true. They did say they will be making money from corporate licensing but of course, when something is free “You’re Not the Customer; You’re the Product”

I think it’s OK for a free product, but I don’t think it comes close to the Alfred in terms of feature and speed and community.

If someone is fine by using an app that might move to subscription model after taking VC funding sometime in the future (like 1Password), I would not wanna invest in it, but to each their own

EDIT: A few users above mentioned the Raycast workflows page, which I strongly agree is better and consolidated. Alfred team could/should do the same

PS: I have made a post on the Alfred forums, let’s see if they’d consider a consolidated workflow repo like Raycast

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23

I found Alfred does have some consolidated workflows

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24

Thanks for the tip.

Yeah, I for me as well that’s one of the biggest selling points of Raycast. They have an amazing store ecosystem already which is rapidly growing and a great extensions API. In terms of extension, I do believe Raycast has moved past Alfred in terms of design and capability. As a developer, the Typescript and React implementation makes me smile :relaxed:.

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25

Appreciate the feedback! Your post helps me understand why people like Alfred as much as they do and helped me learn some new things about Alfred!

Perhaps my current preference for Raycast has more to do with approachability, marketing, and/or the newness of the app? With Alfred, you can do so much that when I looked into it, I was getting into my own way trying to write my scripts. Yes, you can customize the look and tweak every setting, but I just wanted it to look nice and accept my custom scripts. Raycast gave me that and more. It took 20 seconds to see the straightforward implementation of both 1) scripts and 2) official extensions. It was a simple, “Ah, I get it“ and I just started writing in my preferred scripting languages. “Growing up with Raycast” is probably why it seems so approachable to me.

Like I’ve said a few times, Alfred doesn’t need to prove itself. It’s the standard for a reason. And I don’t blame people for sticking with it. It’s a beast. Thanks for the extended explanation. That was really helpful for me! (And it’s nice to know that if the VC funding ever makes Raycast go sideways, I can just port my stuff over to Alfred without any work :slight_smile: ).

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26

I’m back to trying Recast after a brief look several months ago. I love the little built-in interactions, such as being able to enter and view Reminders and calendar events right from the UI. Is there anything similar for Messages, or via something in the Store? I couldn’t find anything. (One of my most-used LaunchBar features is to start typing “Compose” and then selecting a Message action which pops up a composition window, without ever opening Messages, where I can type a message to someone and send it via the Messages app.)

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27

Alfred users, I got a response from the Alfred team. They said the app store is on their radar and they have a few ways to implement it.

Importantly, they said a some very special things are coming out this year.

@BradG @kennonb @SetKu @zkarj

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28

Yay! Can’t wait for what might be in these new updates.

Looking forward to seeing the new features and updates.

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29

This has been a useful post. I tried Raycast for 1 day. I started using it because of the window management features. But, I followed MacSparky’s keyboard maestro guide for window management and have the actions mapped to a layer on the keyboard. Admittedly, I am the wrong person to appreciate Raycast, as I do not program anything. I do not totally understand creating actions in Alfred, but I can usually kludge something together.
i

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