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 at the core of Raycast. Enable them in the Settings to get new commands, such as File Search. And install core Extensions from the Store & Extensions, for example, the Jira extension allows you to create and check issues without opening a browser, as well as Extensions built by 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 familiarize 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.
- Enable extensions in the Settings and explore the commands. F.e. the Calendar extension makes it trivial to create or check upcoming events, and join meetings easily.
- Enter any math expression in the root search and copy the result with
↵
. Check out some examples of our powerful Calculator . - 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.