What's New in Raycast for Mac v2

Here's a tour of the big and small improvements you'll find across the app. Many of these were among the most-requested features from our community, so we listened and built them for you.

General

• A fresh new look and feel across the app, redesigned for macOS Tahoe.
• A simpler, cleaner compact mode that's easier to scan at a glance.
• Application symlinks now show up in Root Search, so you can launch them just like any other app.
• Raycast in Raycast: more reliable copy and paste between Raycast surfaces, for example pasting a Quick AI response into a Raycast Note.
• Search in the Settings sidebar, allowing you to quickly find any extension, command, or preference across Settings.

Shortcuts

• A new and improved hotkey recorder that's quicker and more reliable to set up.
• Use the fn key on its own as a single-tap modifier, perfect for a quick shortcut without holding multiple keys.
• Support for single-tap fn key and double tap modifiers.
• Improved support for international keyboards. You can now record your hotkeys as either physical or key-equivalent keys.
• Better detection when shortcuts overlap, with a clear option to overwrite the existing one.
• Assign hotkeys and aliases right from the Action Panel in Root Search, no need to dig into Settings.
• You can now assign left and right modifier keys as hotkeys. Simply click on the key when you set it up in the Action Panel in Root Search or directly in Settings → Shortcuts
• Single-modifier and multi-modifier hotkeys work on Windows too, not just macOS.
• Holding both keys of the same modifier at once (left and right ⌘ together, for example) can be its own hotkey, separate from a ⌘ ⌘ double tap. See Hotkey Types.
• Hyper Key is more reliable, with new diagnostics for conflicts with other apps, Karabiner remappings, and system keyboard remappings.
• New Secure Input Compatibility option keeps your Hyper Key shortcuts working even while an app has macOS Secure Input active (such as a focused password field), without needing a keyboard driver like Karabiner.

File Search

• Now powered by a new indexing engine for faster results and more ways to filter.
• Files and folders can now be found right in Root Search, so you don't need a separate command to look them up.

Snippets

• Added support for tagging, so you can organize and find snippets faster.
• Major reliability improvements for snippet expansion across Chromium and Electron apps, plus better handling of multiline snippets. Shorter snippets also expand faster.

Quicklinks

• Added support for pinning, so your most-used Quicklinks always stay at the top.
• Added support for tagging to keep large collections of Quicklinks organized.

• Added Prefer Existing Tabs, which focuses an already-open tab when launching a Quicklink instead of opening a new one.

• Create Quicklink now autofills the path of the selected file when Finder is active.

Clipboard History

• Clipboard capture is now more reliable: Raycast detects changes directly instead of polling every 0.75 seconds, so fast consecutive copies are no longer missed.
• More reliable detection of the source app for each clipboard entry.
• Raycast now saves every original format you copied and lets you restore them, so pasting always matches the source.
• Rename clipboard entries to make them easier to find later.
• When you copy multiple files or pieces of content at once, they're now grouped together as a single clipboard entry.
• Refreshed UI for browsing history, with several visual improvements over v1.
• When pasting, you can now prefer plain text over the original formatting — enable "Prefer pasting as plain text" in settings to strip rich formatting automatically.

• Copy text directly from QR codes found in images stored in your clipboard history.

Translator

• Set default source and target languages so you don't have to pick them every time.
• Create custom commands with predefined language pairs, so you can jump straight into translating your most-used languages without picking them each time.
• New Use Selected Text as Source setting. When it's on, triggering the translator via hotkey automatically fills in whatever you have selected.
• Inline translation with the in suffix, so you can translate right as you type.

Emoji & Symbols

• Multiple grid size options, so you can pick the layout that suits you best.

Screenshots

• Column Count: choose between 3, 4, 5, or 6 columns in the Search Screenshots grid to tune thumbnail size and density to your liking.

Calendar

• New Create Event command for adding events without leaving Raycast.

Calculator

• Added syntax highlighting so expressions are easier to read at a glance.
• Several new syntax to use in Calculator, including:
  • Work hours and days: workhours in 2023, 55h in workdays.
  • Pixel calculations: 2 inches in px at 72 ppi.
  • Trigonometry: cot, csc, plus hyperbolic, inverse, and degree variants (coth, csch, acot, acsc, cotd, cscd, acotd, acscd).
  • Time diff shorthand: time diff Paris, diff Paris.
  • Date/time expressions: time in 4 hours [in San Francisco], 3 days from now at 4:39pm, ISO 8601 Zulu.
  • Calendar arithmetic: August 5 + 5 (days), 3:45pm + 5 (hours), 8am to 4pm.
  • Percentage phrases: 20% discount off $500, 5% gratuity on $95.
  • Percentage ratios: 20% of 500, 90-30%.
  • Percentage elapsed: day percentage, week %, year percentage.
  • US customary units: 5 feet 3 inches in cm; more ft/in aliases.
  • Unit shorthands: mo, yr, deg.
  • Currency shorthand: USD1K; 10K = 10,000 (10 K = kelvin); kilo as a synonym for kg; no-space 1kUSD.
  • Cities and airports: 119 new tourist destinations and airports; multi-word resolution (London Heathrow); aliases for multi-airport cities.
• Other fixes and improvements to existing syntax and expressions.

Window Management

• New Switch to Next Space and Switch to Previous Space commands to jump between Spaces without the macOS animation.

Dynamic Placeholders

• New {calculator} placeholder for inline math, available in Snippets, Quicklinks, and AI Commands.

AI

Quick AI

• Redesigned to match AI Chat, with a more powerful composer for richer prompts.
• Tool calls and AI Commands now show richer detail — expand any run to inspect the inputs the model passed.
• Added Quick AI as a fallback command (Settings → Launcher → Fallback Commands)

AI Chat

• Presets are now called Agents, and they're reused across chats. Update an agent's configuration once and the change applies to every chat that uses it. Learn more on the Agents page.
• Added Memory so chats remember context about you and feel more personal. Learn more on the Personalization page.
• Added Skills so you can give Raycast AI custom instructions and knowledge for the tasks you do often. Learn more on the Skills page.
• Skills and AI Extensions are now loaded into the chat dynamically when they're relevant, so you don't need to mention them manually.
• Tool calls and AI Commands now show richer detail — expand any run to inspect the inputs the model passed.
• Chats can be auto-archived after a set period, keeping your sidebar tidy without any manual cleanup.
• Branch off any message in a chat to explore a different direction without losing the original thread.
• Raycast AI can now pause to ask you a short multiple-choice question when a request is ambiguous, so it can confirm the right direction before continuing.
• Added Background Notifications so you get notified when a chat finishes responding in the background.
• Long chats now keep going instead of hitting a wall. As a conversation approaches its model's context limit, Raycast summarizes the earlier turns for you and continues from there. See Long Conversations.

Screen Awareness

• New Screen Awareness lets you ask Raycast AI about whatever you're looking at. It reads the focused app's content, the text you have selected, and a screenshot of the window, then sends the lot to AI with your question.
• Attach it in AI Chat or Quick AI with Focused Window, run Send Focused Window to AI from a hotkey, or mention @screen-awareness and let the model look for itself. Learn more on the Screen Awareness page.

AI Commands

• New Quick Fix runs the Fix Spelling and Grammar command in any focused app with a single hotkey — learn more on the AI Commands page.
• New Output Behavior option lets each command either Open in Raycast or Replace Selection in place.

Dictation

• Dictation turns speech into clean, formatted text and pastes it directly into the app you're in, with filler words and punctuation handled for you.
• Auto Styling picks the right tone for where you're typing, so dictation in Mail comes out as an email and dictation in Slack comes out as a quick message.
• Custom Vocabulary, Instructions, and Styles let you teach Dictation your spellings, your tone, and your own per-app templates.
• Press or hold to talk. Tap the hotkey to start and stop, or hold it down for push-to-talk, with the Dictation Pill keeping you in flow.
• Dictation History gives you back every past transcription, ready to paste, copy, or delete.
• Added Dictate in AI Chat so you can answer AI Chat's questions and confirmation prompts by voice with Ctrl M.

Personalization

• Added Profile, where you can jot down context about yourself (role, preferred tools, communication style) that Raycast AI uses across conversations.
• Added Memory, an automatic summary Raycast AI builds from your conversations over time, picking up on your projects, preferences, and goals.
• Both are fully editable, and you can turn them off any time in Settings → AI → Personalization.

Plenty more improvements are scattered throughout Raycast v2 — many of them your most-requested. Thanks for sharing your ideas on making Raycast better and use the Send Feedback command to share your thoughts on the new Raycast.

Coming Soon

There are still some features that are not yet available in the beta. We are still working on these so they will come soon.

• Inline Emoji Picker
• Calculator flight tracker
• Local Models
• Custom Providers

FAQ