Favorite feature

Joining a meeting was the one feature very early on that convinced me Raycast is the replacement for Spotlight + Alfred. Combine that with upcoming events shown in the menu bar, and it’s a game changer.

Most used Commands, Quicklinks, Scripts and Snippets

Search Screenshots. In my day-to-day I extensively use screenshots and screen captures. Browsing them in a grid, plus finding the ones based on text inside them, is such a timesaver.

Triggering Homekit through Shortcuts.app. It’s just so convenient to change light scenes at home within seconds.

Create Reminders. I used a lot of different todo apps throughout the years and came back full circle to the default Apple Reminders app. Hitting a hotkey to then jot down some keywords as reminders works great for me.

Toggle System Appearance. I often switch to dark mode before the sun’s down, but also for testing purposes at work. So I happen to use this one a lot.

Clipboard History. I copy a lot of things and CMD+X is often my preferred way of deleting text. So for those moments where I need to recover an older piece, I’m happy that Raycast has got my back.

Window Management. Maximize, Almost Maximize, Left Half and Right Half are the ones that I bound hotkeys to.

Emoji Picker. The moment this launched, I replaced the default macOS shortcut for the Emoji Picker.

I also have a couple of basic Quicklinks set up for recurring meeting notes and projects in Notion (that open in the macOS app using Choosy). And lastly, some common Google Translate actions.

Top extensions from the Store

I’m the biggest user of CleanShot X. For the few types of actions I don’t have hotkeys for, I use Raycast: Self-Timer, Capture Text, Scrolling Capture, Capture Previous Area and Open from Clipboard.

Aliases, hotkeys, and fallback searches

Aliases: I’ve set up hotkeys for all my frequently used Commands, and aliases for the few that I don’t need too frequently.

c for Contacts

cl for Clipboard History

d for Define Word

Hotkeys: My left hand is always hovering over the modifier keys. My hotkeys are often a combination of keys, mostly to prevent conflicts. Some of the complex looking ones are also due to some legacy setup and muscle memory.

Option + F for Files Search

CMD + Option + Shift + P for Pitch.app

CMD + Option + Shift + 1 for 1Password

CMD + Option + Shift + S for Search Screenshots

CMD + Option + Shift + R for Create Reminder

CMD + Option + Shift + T for Toggle System Appearance

CMD + Option + Shift + N for Toggle Floating Notes

Fallbacks

• DuckDuckGo search (I’ve set this up as a Quicklink)
• Define Word
• Search Contacts
• 2x Google Translate: DE ↔ EN

Anything else

The Raycast Slack community is very active but still easy to follow. And a team or community member always responds in a helpful way. Whenever I share suggestions or bugs they all get followed up on quite quickly.

Last but not least: Confetti! It’s a lot of fun! And always surprising to an audience when I trigger it while screen sharing.