Raycast, a free Alfred alternative

Lately, there’s been a fair amount of talk about a newcomer in this space called Raycast. It’s been discussed on Reddit, MPU talk forums and a few podcasts.

I bought my first Alfred license in 2016. As you might imagine, I’m heavily invested in Alfred. So, until now I’ve ignored Raycast. I was convinced to give it a try after listening to John Voorhees talk about how he has been using it in episode 257 of App Stories.

So, here’s what I’m doing. I’m running Alfred (⌘ spacebar) and Raycast (⌥ spacebar) side by side. For the short period of time that I have been using it, I’m liking it a lot. It could definitely replace Alfred if I had a reason to change.

Raycast is a great app and it’s FREE for personal use. You should certainly give it a try.

Raycast – FAQ

How is Raycast different to Spotlight, Alfred and other launchers?

Alfred is an app to search your Mac and the web with hotkeys, keywords, text expansions and more. Workflows are used to extend its functionality.

Raycast provides a much richer feature set compared to those launchers. On top of searching local apps and files, it can be your clipboard manager, text expander, window manager, command palette for all apps and much more. Raycast provides much deeper and more native integrations to third party services. You can install extensions for Jira, GitHub, and Google Workspace, amongst others from the Store and control them without ever opening a browser.

Raycast’s command line inspired user interface goes beyond searching data. List and detail views provide quick access to important information. Forms make it easy to create new content such as Jira issues, and the Action Panel is used to perform actions such as merging a GitHub pull request. We concentrate on providing a fluid UX throughout the app.

Raycast can be extended to tailor the experience even further with Script Commands and custom extensions which can be built with our flexible API. You can share all that within teams or communities.

#Mac #Apps #Alfred

RSS Feed | Email Me | Mastodon
© 2024 ldstephens.me