Notes

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.

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 / CtrlN) 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:

1. By typing Markdown syntax like creating a heading with #
2. By pressing keyboard shortcuts like ⌘B / CtrlB to make text bold
3. By performing the Format action via the Action Panel (⌘K / CtrlK)
4. 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	macOS Shortcut	Windows Shortcut	Markdown Syntax
Heading 1	⌥⌘1	CtrlAlt1	Type # at the beginning of a new line
Heading 2	⌥⌘2	CtrlAlt2	Type ## at the beginning of a new line
Heading 3	⌥⌘3	CtrlAlt3	Type ### at the beginning of a new line
Code block	⌥⌘C	CtrlAltC	Type ``` (three backticks and a space) or ~~~ (three tildes and a space) at the beginning of a new line
Blockquote	⇧⌘B	CtrlShiftB	Type > at the beginning of a new line
Ordered list	⇧⌘7	CtrlShift7	Type 1. (or any other number followed by a dot) at the beginning of a new line
Bullet list	⇧⌘8	CtrlShift8	Type * or - at the beginning of a new line
Task list	⇧⌘9	CtrlShift9	Type [] for an unchecked task or [x] for a checked task at the beginning of a new line

To toggle a task’s checked state, place the cursor on the task line and press ⌘Enter / CtrlEnter.

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	macOS Shortcut	Windows Shortcut	Markdown Syntax
Bold	⌘B	CtrlB	Type **two asterisks** or __two underlines__
Italic	⌘I	CtrlI	Type *one asterisk* or _one underline_
Strikethrough	⇧⌘S	CtrlShiftS	Type ~~two tildes~~
Underline	⌘U	CtrlU	N/A
Code	⌘E	CtrlE	Type `one backtick`
Link	⌘L	CtrlL	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	macOS Shortcut	Windows Shortcut	Markdown Syntax
Emoji	N/A	N/A	Type : to open the inline emoji picker
Horizontal rule	N/A	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 / CtrlP.

Alternatively, you can use the Search Notes command in Raycast's Root Search. This is handy when you want to quickly open a note, such as 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 / CtrlShiftP (from the Search Notes window, it's ⌘. / Ctrl.).

Once a note is pinned, it can be accessed with ⌘0 / Ctrl0 through ⌘9 / Ctrl9 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 focus on a single note at a time. But sometimes you want to go back and forth between multiple notes. You can use the ⌘[ / Ctrl[ and ⌘] / Ctrl] keyboard shortcuts to navigate between previously opened notes. This is similar to how the navigation hierarchy works in most browsers.

FAQ

Troubleshooting

If Notes isn't working as expected, here are some common issues and steps to resolve them.