Raycast Notes makes it frictionless to organize your thoughts from anywhere on your Mac. You can track your todos, take notes during meetings, and save your next big idea. It’s designed to be lightweight with Markdown support and is just a keystroke away with a deep integration into the rest of Raycast’s ecosystem.
Our note-taking experience comes with three commands:
- Raycast Notes: This command simply toggles the Notes window.
- Create Note: This command creates a new note and opens the window. It’s ideal to capture your thoughts with zero friction.
- Search Notes: This command allows you to search all your notes by title and content, making it easy to revisit previous notes.
Pro Tip: We recommend assigning a hotkey to the Raycast Notes command for quicker access. A commonly used hotkey is ⌥ N.
Open Raycast → Settings → Extensions → Raycast Notes to record a hotkey.
Creating
It all starts by creating a new note. It can be your next big idea or just a way to jot down some thoughts. If you have Raycast Notes already open, you can click the plus button in the top-right corner of the toolbar (or press ⌘ N) to create a new note.
Alternatively, you can use the Create Note command in Raycast’s root search, which is globally available. After you have successfully created a new note, you can start writing. The first line of the note is used as the title of the note, which is shown in the toolbar.
Editing
Raycast Notes offers a lightweight editing experience that allows you to format your note with ease.
There are four ways to format your notes:
- By typing Markdown syntax like starting a line with
#for a heading - By pressing keyboard shortcuts like
⌘Bto make text bold - By performing the Format action via the Action Panel (
⌘K) - By activating the Format Bar on the bottom of the window
Below is an overview of all formatting options and their corresponding keyboard shortcut and Markdown syntax.
Paragraph Formatting
Everything you need to organize your content into clear, structured sections - from headers and lists to specialized blocks that help keep your notes tidy and easy to navigate.
Format | Keyboard Shortcut | Markdown Syntax |
Heading 1 | ⌥ ⌘ 1 | Type # at the beginning of a new line |
Heading 2 | ⌥ ⌘ 2 | Type ## at the beginning of a new line |
Heading 3 | ⌥ ⌘ 3 | Type ### at the beginning of a new line |
Code block | ⌥ ⌘ C | Type ``` (three backticks and a space) or ∼∼∼ (three tildes and a space) at the beginning of a new line |
Blockquote | ⇧ ⌘ B | Type > at the beginning of a new line |
Ordered list | ⇧ ⌘ 7 | Type 1. (or any other number followed by a dot) at the beginning of a new line |
Bullet list | ⇧ ⌘ 8 | Type * , - or + at the beginning of a new line |
Task list | ⇧ ⌘ 9 | Type [ ] or [x] at the beginning of a new line |
Text Formatting
Basic styling options that let you modify the appearance of individual words or phrases within your text to emphasize important points, add links, or create distinctions.
Format | Keyboard Shortcut | Markdown Syntax |
Bold | ⌘ B | Type **two asterisks** or __two underlines__ |
Italic | ⌘ I | Type *one asterisk* or _one underline_ |
Strikethrough | ⇧ ⌘ S | Type ~~two tildes~~ |
Underline | ⌘ U | N/A |
Code | ⌘ E | Type `one backtick` |
Link | ⌘ L | Type [link text in square brackets](link-url-in-parentheses) |
Other Formatting
Additional formatting elements that help you enhance your notes with visual separators and expressive elements like emojis to improve readability and communication.
Format | Keyboard Shortcut | Markdown Syntax |
Emoji | N/A | Type : to open the inline emoji picker |
Horizontal rule | N/A | Type three dashes ( ---) or three underscores and a space (___ ) at the beginning of a new line |
Organizing
Raycast Notes offers support for multiple notes but balances it with a lightweight user interface. Only one note is visible at the time. Notes are organized as a stack. You can think of them as a notepad with multiple pages. To access previous notes, you can click the Browse Notes tool bar item in the top right or press ⌘ P.
Alternatively, you can use the Search Notes command in Raycast’s root search. This is handy when you want to quickly open a note, f.e. a note for your 1:1 with your manager.
Pinning
Some notes are more important than others and you want to revisit them on a regular basis. Those notes can be pinned to the top of the Search Notes command and the Browse Notes action. To pin a note, press ⇧ ⌘ P.
Once a note is pinned, it can be accessed with ⌘ 0...9 while you have the Notes window open. This is similar to how pinned tabs work in most browsers and should feel familiar.
Navigating
Raycast Notes keeps your focuses on a single note at the time. But sometimes you want to go back and forth between multiple notes. You can use the ⌘ [/] keyboard shortcuts to navigate between previously opened notes. This is similar to how the navigation hierarchy works in most browsers