The Basics

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.

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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 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.