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!
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!
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 
I suppose one could ask, “why do I need a car when I could just walk everywhere?”. And there are cases where using one’s legs is good enough.
I use Alfred. I also use a program called NeoFinder to catalog my photographs (I’ve been cataloging images for a long time …).
To find an image I can:
Or:
And that’s just one example.
A different (non Raycast/Alfred/Launchbar/Quicksilver/Butler) example. I got along using just macOS for window management for quite some time. And I still could. But having utilities to do so automagically makes my computing experience that much better.
When I lived in the city we had neighbors who were retired. The walked to the market, to restaurants, to concerts, to the doctor. They had little need for a car (they occasionally rented one). If the tools provided by macOS work for you then that is great. If you find that you could benefit by extending the native OS capabilities, then there are tools available to do so.
Despite what some may think choice is good.
You can use, what ever App you want, I don’t question that!
But to stay with your Example, I don’t understand why you use a second car, to drive to the first car, you already have?
CMD+Space + Neo Enter
CMD + F and the Keyword Enter
You skip with your Example, that you have to voke Alfred in the same way, you have to woke NeoFinder.
So the Big Difference is just, that you use a third party app, to do the same you could do with macOS and NeoFinder itself.
There is no advantage in using Alfred for your Example, rather than using the App with the cool hat.
But I didn’t questioned Alfred!
I wanted to know what Raycast can do, what I can’t do with macOS in the same, or even a simpler way!
Choice is always good, and as already written, I don’t want to question the apps someone is using because he want to, or need to.
I just wanted to understand why so many people using Raycast, while I can’t find any advantage of it, in comparison to macOS.
I just want to know what I may be don’t see, that could be an advantage for me, too?
Thanks for the question. These launchers aren’t 100% unique in what they can bring to the macOS experience. Probably 30–40% of the things I use Raycast for I could do in spotlight (sometimes less elegantly, sometimes the same).
But being able to invoke custom scripts and extensions in Raycast gives me 1) quick 2) keyboard access to 3) addition functionality I find useful.
For instance, through my “spotlight” (Raycast), I can hit one keyboard shortcut to:
Those are a few examples of things I can do with Raycast I can’t do with spotlight.
If you look through the official extensions and the shared community scripts for Raycast, you may find something you’d want to do that you can’t do in Spotlight. If nothing appeals to you, then Spotlight may work great for you.
So these launchers aren’t 100% new features; they’re more like superpowers you can optionally add on top of Spotlight if you find use for them. Does that help?
I looked at those extensions, but as far as I understood, you can do all of that also with Automator, don’t you?!
Not quite …
macOS:
Alfred:
Alfred and Raycast belong to the same class of apps. Thus my Alfred example has relevance with respect to Raycast. Although there may not be a NeoFinder extension for Raycast. The point is that his is the type of thing you can do with one of these ‘Spotlight replacement’ apps.
Not to my knowledge, but you may be much more skilled than me at Automator. If you download and try Raycast or Alfred or any other launcher and don’t feel they’re useful, then Spotlight will work great for you!
I suppose you could do all that in assembly language as well …
(Looks across the room at his 68000 assembly language manuals and shutters …)
As I said already, I don’t question Alfred.
And I haven’t found anything on the Raycast Extensions yet, I can’t do with Automators. (Of course I just looked at a couple of them, right now)
I even wouldn’t wonder, if Automators would be “running in the Background” of Raycast.
If you can’t understand the similarities then I can’t help you. 
Enjoy Spotlight and macOS!
(And no, Raycast does not us Automator running in the background.)
You do have a large Room, right… 
Your example still is not fair, as you launch Neofinder, and you have Alfred already running.
And, BTW, you can launch NeoFinder on a dedicated shortcut, too.
So, the big difference between those two variations results in using “//” within Alfred, and using “CMD+F” in NeoFinder.
Or, perhaps, with Shortcuts, but the point is that you have to build something to accomplish your task, and why not build it using the tool(s) that you find most intuitive to you.
It seems to be, that a lot of people in this thread are using Alfred AND Raycast.
So if both Apps where doing the same, that would be unnecessary, isn’t it?
And I know a few things Alfred is doing very well, so I still use Alfred sometimes, too!
But Raycast seems to be a totally different thing, and that is why I asked for an explanation, why Raycast could help me doing thinks, I could not do with the macOS itself!
I really don’t care, what apps you are using, and why you think you need to use those apps.
So I don´t understand why you are reacting like this right now!?
No, you are still not quite getting it.
I have Alfred set to launch on startup. I no more have to launch Alfred than I have to launch Spotlight.
NeoFinder is not set to launch on startup. So it needs to be launched.
Why would I launch NeoFinder on a dedicated shortcut if I can use Spotlight (or in my case Alfred?). And do you expect me to set up a keyboard shortcut for every app I use?
“//” indicates a comment. It is not anything that I type in Alfred. Bad assumption on my part that “//” would be recognized as such. Sorry.
Once I type Alt-Space to invoke Alfred (analogous to Cmd-Space for Spotlight) I type “Neo keyword”, where “keyword” is a variable. So if I wanted to search for images of Iceland I would type:
And NeoFinder would launch and present any image that has the keyword Iceland.
I fully agree with that!
I have to eighter build it in Shortcuts, Automators (and so on) by myself, or I can find someone within the Internet already have done that, and shares his idea with the public.
So if the big difference would be, that I have a “shop” within Raycast, to find these helpful ideas, whether to have to search for myself, than I agree that Raycast could be of an advantage to a lot of inexperience (or maybe better: less experienced) people.
Thank you for mentioning that!
I wanted to understand why I could have an advantage from using Raycast!
I don´t wanted to argue with you about Alfred, and a single second or two delay in a search!
But, you can launch NeoFinder during StartUp as well, it is running on my iMac the whole day without any problems!
And if Alfred is launching NeoFinder anyway, to complete the search, even that advantage you mentioned is just gone…
I don´t care, if you set a keyboard shortcut for every app, a single app, a part of your apps, or if you don’t use Keyboard Shortcuts at all!
I just mentioned that your example is not fair, as you use different settings to evaluate the advantage of the one app, or the other.
BTW Spotlight can search for Tags, too.