Agreed! Healthy competition is great for everyone!
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Yay! I’ve wanted an easy timer on my Mac, and this is good. Thank you.
I’d love a couple more options in the short ones (without going into custom), like 3 minutes and 8 minutes.
Or if the custom saved ones were quicker to access.
BUT, I’ve wanted a timer for ages and haven’t found anything I liked, and I like this, so thanks for contributing and I love it how it is already 
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I’m enjoying Raycast, and am going to stick with it for a while, or maybe permanently. Two things I’m currently missing, although I could just be overlooking things:
-
quick access to recent documents on a per app basis. In Launchbar, for example, you can start typing an app name, and then type a modifier key to see the app’s most recently used documents. This can be done with the app not running, and let’s you launch the app directly into that document
-
as mentioned a few posts above, sending a message via the Messages app, from the Launchbar interface, without ever opening Messages
These are two of the most-common things I do with Launchbar, so I hope I’m not sticking with Raycast just because it’s new and shiny. Wouldn’t be the first time. 
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I can’t respond to this thread without first pouring one out for QuickSilver. RIP. QuickSilver is what made me fall in love with macOS in the first place. I then moved on to LaunchBar when it was no longer supported and never did give Alfred a try. I didn’t like the UI.
I got a new laptop for work in November of last year and decided to try Raycast. I did not install LaunchBar in an attempt to force myself to learn it and not revert back within days. Muscle memory was the hardest thing to overcome—having to invoke an additional key or type a phrase to start searching for files or go through my clipboard history was a pain at first. Adding a command helped with this significantly. However, the thing that did me in was the file search. I could select what folders were in the Index for LaunchBar, so my search never drilled down to files and folders that were not my active projects. Another missing feature for me was the “Send To”, where I could use a special command to take the selection (often a file in Finder) and choose what app to open it with. Turns out someone has since made a Raycast extension for that called Open With App. If only I were patient—I did try Raycast for 5 months before giving up.
Ultimately, I didn’t go back to LaunchBar… I went to ScriptKit and I have not turned back. Creating extensions or scripts is an absolute breeze and you can easily load npm libraries if needed. I have all the features I use the most and then some.
- App Launcher
- Clipboard History
- File Search
- Open File With / Send To
- Calculator
- Trigger my Personal Scripts
- Integrated Terminal
- Snippets
I’ll eventually put together a post of what I’m doing with it and my custom scripts. The community is great. The developer streams his work on the Kit app and has a video course for getting started. At this time the only thing I’m missing from LaunchBar or Raycast is the ability to pull open my calendar and automatically open the invite link to whatever call I need to join (most likely MS Teams or WebEx). If someone else hasn’t developed that plugin yet, I’ll get started when I have the time.
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As I noted in another thread, when there is a choice to make, I select all of the above. It’s what I do. 
So I just downloaded ScriptKit. There goes my weekend …
I am concerned that this is a single developer and it is free, although it is open source.
Update: Free for now. I found this while looking around on the website: " 1. Script Kit Pro. A paid version with additional features not found in the base version. Not ready to talk about it, but it’s exciting!"
I am encouraged that the is a plan to make this a viable business. Also interesting that there are beta versions for Linux and Windows.
And if I like it I’ll have a reason to finally learn JavaScript!
Thanks, I think …
Update 2: One can call Script Kit scripts from Raycast …
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For the first of your pain points, I don’t think you can currently do that with Raycast. For the second, I’ve just mapped the contacts to a shortcut so I can invoke it automatically and start typing for a contact. One keyboard press and you’re writing a message to that contact. I’ve also added an AppleScript for my wife and set it as a special keyboard shortcut so from anywhere in my system I can press a key, type a message to her, and hit return to send her a message.
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Thanks! I’ll check out your AppleScript. As far as mapping the contacts to a shortcut, do you mean you just set a keyboard shortcut to launch the contacts app?
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On a related note, I discovered that at some point I made a Shortcut in the Shortcuts app to text my wife. If I start typing the name of the shortcut in Raycast, I get the same popup window that happens in LaunchBar. I stumbled upon this, but there might be something to work with there.
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That ended up being easy enough. I took the shortcut I mentioned in the previous message, and edited it to remove the recipient, and I named it “Compose Message.” Now if I start typing “Compose Message” in Raycast, I can select that shortcut, and I get the same popup that I previously got in LaunchBar. I keep the “Show When Run” box checked, and I can do it all in one window. If that box is unchecked, which some might prefer, you first get prompted for a recipient, and then for the content of your message.
Here is what I see in Raycast when typing the name of the shortcut:
And then here is what the popup windows looks like:
And here is the super-simple shortcut that makes all that happen:
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This is nice.
@Cpenned 's is also good for making it super quick since it defaults to entering text on the message, not the recipient. With their applescript, I have followed instructions (thanks!) and added it to Raycast.
I have then made a global shortcut in Raycast, so Hyper-J runs this.
Now to message my wife, all I do is:
- Press Hyper-J
- Type the message
- Press return.
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Same, but mine is hyper M because my wife’s name starts with “M”
Sorry—here I meant that you can map the “Search Contacts” built in Raycast action to a keyboard shortcut and then immediately text anyone after searching for their name. So the steps are:
- Hit keyboard shortcut to pull up Search Contacts built in action (you have to set your own custom keyboard shortcut).
- Type person’s name.
- Hit ⌘+m to open an iMessage to that person.
So that’s three steps to message anyone. (you can also invoke any other contact action like “call” etc. this same way)
Ah, very slick, thanks! Also had a chance this morning to check out your script from above, and that is extremely elegant.
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Weirdly, I use both Alfred and Raycast 
Raycast
Because of visual results. Sometimes I like to ping a website, find out the key of a song, see my next events and act on them with the keyboard, geolocate an IP, find an image on Unsplash, see the definition of a word etc.
I can do all of those and see non-structured results in the same Raycast window, without having to leave the current app. That wouldn’t be possible with Alfred’s row-based approach.
I also like the hotkeys discoverability in Raycast, and strive to do the same in my apps
Alfred
Because it’s super snappy! Raycast feels just a bit more sluggish in its UI, not sure why.
File search and acting on files is a lot more intuitive in Alfred, and the default results are tweaked to my needs so I usually don’t even need to activate a workflow. I just ⌘ space and search for an app/movie/document/image/contact/bookmark etc.
Also, the new Universal Actions feature really makes this acting on files thing so much more useful.
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Off topic, but that’s a beautiful blog theme!
The script is useful too!
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I am sorry, to be maybe to stupid, to understand that, and I read thru all 46 previous posts, and had a closer look on the Homepage of Raycast, but, can someone expel to me, what I can do with Raycast, that I can’t do with macOS?
I mean, Search for a File?, Start an App?, Set a Shortcut? Run a calendar, a calculator or the Reminder, and so on?!
What is it, I did not understand on that issue?
We who use Alfred, Launchbar, and Raycast * prefer to be able to use the keyboard to do things rather than running a mouse. That’s only one reason but I’ve always thought it was the main one.
Edited to add: * and Quicksilver!
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One day macOS will finally bundle the Clock app and my Timers for Raycast extension will no longer be of use 
But yes, echoing the above, keyboard-centric action is a lot more efficient. Also allows me to more quickly reach scripts, Github issues, etc without having to open up another window/tab/etc.
Yes, but you can do all of this with Keyboard Shortcuts within macOS!
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Thanks! It’s crazy rough on the code side of stuff because I made it in a weekend several years back and haven’t had time to clean it up. Hoping to get to it soon