Raycast stays out of your way but is always ready when you need it. This page gives you a brief overview of the basic concepts of Raycast.
Here are the basics to move quickly from your intent to an action:
- Press the global
Hotkey to open Raycast from anywhere (default:
⌥Space). - On the root, search for apps and commands and open them with
↵. - Use the suggestions, to open frequently and recently used ones even quicker.
- Extensions are an essential part of Raycast. There are some built-in extensions, such as File Search and Window Management. You can also visit the Store, where you can find extensions created by us and our developer community.
Pro Tip: You can use Raycast as your default launcher and replace Spotlight. This way you keep your muscle memory for your global hotkey.
First Steps
A couple of things you should try out to familiarise yourself with Raycast:
- Search for an application in the root search and launch it with
↵. - Type sf in the root search to open the Search Files command. By default, you see your recently opened files.
- Enter any math expression in the root search and copy the result with
↵. Check out some examples of our powerfulCalculator .
- Open the Clipboard History command to see text you copied earlier.
- Join our Slack Community to have a stake in our product roadmap.
- Replace Spotlight with Raycast
- Use the Send Feedback command to let us know what you are missing or where we screwed up.